Hello all and sorry if posting this in the wrong place but recently I've needed to reinstall my windows 10 x64. I downloaded the media creation tool for windows 10 and whipped out my trusty ole 4gb usb stick.
Apparently it now requires 8gb to download and its 3am, i dont have a usb higher than that and I need my computer working by tomorrow morning.
Feb 8, 2018 - Microsoft makes the installation files for Windows 10 available from a. Least 8 GB total storage capacity and then downloading an ISO file. The ESD file is more highly compressed and stays comfortably under the 4 GB limit.
After a few hours of fumbling around, I opted to download the windows iso instead using the media tool. The latest version as of december 2017 is 3.4gb.Using the rufus usb tool, you can actually use the iso file and it will create a bootable usb even if it's less than 8gb like the official microsoft tool requires, so long as it's atleast 4gb, or rather 3.73gb in total. Even the webpage for rufus does not advertise this.
This is actually probably known by everyone who is more experienced than me with computers but during those few hours it took me to find this out, a lot of that was on google and I didn't see anything like this.
Anyways, if anyone ever stumbles scross this searching on google like I hoped to find, I hope this helps you all and thanks
If you're planning to do a completely clean install of Windows 10, with no trace of the previous operating system or data left behind, you need to start your PC using bootable media and run the Windows Setup program from there.
For most modern PCs, that means getting your hands on a USB flash drive with at least 8 GB total storage capacity and then downloading an ISO file containing the latest installation image. Just make sure you choose the right ISO file.
Microsoft offers downloads of the Windows 10 installer files from multiple sources. But not all ISO files are created equal, as you'll discover if you compare the setup files carefully.
The screenshot on this page shows the contents of the Windows 10 version 1709 ISO as downloaded from the Visual Studio subscription portal (formerly MSDN) and from Microsoft's public servers, using the Media Creation Tool. The subscription download is nearly identical, except that it contains the key setup files in WIM (Windows Image) format. The public download supplies the same files in ESD (Electronic Software Distribution) format.
In the most recent version, the ESD file is 3.40 GB in size, while the WIM file is nearly a full gigabyte larger at 4.34 GB.
Why does it matter?
When you use the built-in Windows 10 utility to create a recovery drive, your USB flash drive is formatted using the FAT32 disk format. That configuration is required to install Windows on a modern PC with a GPT partition.
But the maximum file size for a FAT32 drive is 4 GB. So when you download an ISO file from the Visual Studio site, double-click to mount it as a virtual drive, and then drag its contents into the window containing the recovery drive, Windows throws up an error message and refuses to copy that WIM file. It's too large to fit on your FAT32-formatted drive.
There are several solutions to this problem, including the use of third-party tools. But the easiest solution is to use the Media Creation Tool, which downloads files specifically tailored for use with a bootable USB flash drive in FAT32 format. The ESD file is more highly compressed and stays comfortably under the 4 GB limit.
Using the Media Creation Tool, you can create bootable installation media directly, but I prefer to download the ISO file instead, which gives me the option to mount that file directly or to attach it to a virtual machine.
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