I believe I use windows 11 media creation tool to create the install for my new PC. How much storage space would my USB flash drive need to store the install data?

Would this 256 gb drive be good or do i need more also

Also some one reccomend me a video on how to do it im completely new at this and like what i would need to do to re optmize my pc etc

Like absolutely everything dont leave anything out i dont want to mess up on this

Hello. I have Windows 11 23H2 on my laptop. I had previously purchased several 32GB SanDisk Cruzer USB flash drives. I used them on my two desktops and the laptop to make Recovery Drives for Windows 10. Windows 10 is still on my desktops, but the laptop has been upgraded to 11. I decided to update the Recovery Drive. I put in the one with the Win10 recovery for the laptop, called up screen to create a recovery drive, but Windows 11 won't accept that drive as a recovery drive.

Windows 11 sees the drive and can read and write to it, but says it's too small for a recovery drive and I need one that's at least 32 GB. It turns out that storage fully amounts to about 30GB. So I bought a 64GB USB-C flash drive. Windows accepts it and starts to create the recovery drive on it. It formats it to 32GB FAT32, starts the process, and then fails about a third of the way through saying there was an error (without specifying what the error is). Windows' Disk Management won't remove the volume. I tell it to remove it, and it accepts the command, but nothing happens. I used a 3rd-party partitioning program to wipe the drive and format it as NTFS. I tried again to create a recovery drive, but it does the same thing, formatting the drive to 32GB FAT32 and failing about 20 minutes into the process.

So I'm wondering if it's that it's a USB-C drive and I should just use a USB 2.0, or maybe the type of drive? It's a Samsung USB-C, USB 3.2 Gen 1, 64GB. I hate scrapping the drive because 64GB isn't enough storage to be of use. Anyone have any experience with any of this?

Many people don't know this but Windows comes with built-in feature that allows you to create a recovery drive, no software needed.

Simply search for it, it's already there. If you have an extra USB-stick that is not in use, consider doing this, as it can really help you recover if you cannot boot into Windows or face other similiar problems in the future. Keep in mind that creating a recovery drive wipes everything stored on the USB device and that you've chosen the right one - the tool will also warn you about this.

Recovery drive is essentially a bootable drive, which contains all of the common troubleshooting tools. For example, you can fix system files from there, do startup repair (incl. fixing the bootloader) or request your PC to boot into safe mode, which is especially good when dealing with OEM driver issues, like GPU. This is equivalent to recovery partition, which comes as part of Windows installation but sometimes it might not be possible to access this partition depending on the issue.

One very significant advantage why I love this feature: when you create a recovery drive, you can choose to back up your system files. This ultimately means that you'll have a (full) copy of your system on the drive during a state when it was functional, aka a system image backup. You can reinstall Windows from this backup, which has several benefits over using official installation media, such as preserving all of the OEM drivers for full hardware support. No need to hunt for them after the reinstallation.

If you back up system files, make sure to update your recovery drive from time to time, e.g. once a year when feature update has been rolled out, so the drive contains a somewhat up-to-date image. It takes approximately an hour to create it (depending on USB speed) but you can schedule it when you're not using your PC. However it often won't take all system resources if you're writing on slower USB-stick, so it's typically possible to use the machine while it's doing it.

Remember that this won't save your data. This is only for system recovery. Use other methods for data backup.

More information here: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/recovery-drive-abb4691b-5324-6d4a-8766-73fab304c246