Use Recovery Drive

[Victoria Steigerwald]

Wentto create a recovery USB drive on windows 11. After a while I was prompted to insert a USB drive of at least 32GB which I duly did but the "next" button stayed greyed out. After checking my USB drive I can see that there is actually only 28.8Gb available. Just to be sure I formatted it again and it stayed at 28.8GB. I checked a few other USB sticks I had lying around and they all seem to have capacity less than advertised (16GB is actually 14.7 etc).

I may have missed something else but the (real) capacity of 28.8GB seems to be what is stopping me from proceeding. I am sure that the good people of Microsoft know about USB drive capacities. Did they really mean us to get 64GB USB sticks to create recovery drives?

It appears that the issue you're encountering is a common one related to the way storage devices are marketed versus how operating systems calculate storage space.

Manufacturers often advertise storage capacity based on the assumption that 1GB equals 1 billion bytes. However, operating systems like Windows calculate 1GB as 1,073,741,824 bytes (1024^3 bytes), resulting in a lower displayed capacity.

For creating a Windows 11 recovery drive, a USB drive with a minimum capacity of 32GB is required. If your 32GB USB drive is showing only 28.8GB of available space, it may not be recognized by the recovery tool.

Here are some suggestions:

2. Use Disk Management or DiskPart: These built-in Windows tools can help delete all partitions on the USB drive and create a new single partition that utilizes the full capacity.

There is absolutely nothing in my recovery drive except the Recovery file. There are no hidden files. But I only have 2.62 GB free of 23.6 GB and keep getting a message that I have low disk space. My C: drive has 802 GB free of 906 GB!

Additionally 3) we tested and disabled the LowDiskSpace alert for Windows Explorer so that Windows Explorer should not bother you with prompts about no free disk space or low disk space alerts. As per the confirmation, this only affects the disk space, not RAM space . Here are details >> -us/help/555622/how-to-remove-the-low-disk-space-warning

I will send you a private message (PM). Please, look around the forum's website, near the LogOut button above (near your user name here) and you will find the mail/envelope icon. Check your private message and reply there. Thank you for your understanding!

I just checked the notes of your issue and it seems I have sent you a PM back in August which has been read on November, 19th. You have replied back to me on Nov 19th but nothing after that. It seems I have ignored it thinking of it as a SPAM, I receive lots of messages and I have forgotten your case from August. But I remember it now.

If your device encounters severe issues, such as an inability to access the operating system, you can utilize a recovery drive to access the Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE). It assists in the restoration of Windows or the execution of system restore points. To use a recovery drive, you must first prepare an empty USB flash drive (with a minimum of 16GB of space) to create a Windows recovery drive. As Windows undergoes periodic updates to enhance security and device performance, it is recommended to periodically create a new recovery drive.

Note: When restoring the device via a recovery drive, the original disk partition data on the system drive may be deleted. (If your device supports MyASUS in WinRE or ASUS Recovery, functionalities built into the disk partitions on the system drive will be removed.) If you wish to preserve these functionalities, you can restore the device through a system image, thereby backing up the data in the disk partitions. Learn more about How to create and use Windows System Image to restore your device.

If you experience the device cannot boot, you can use the recovery drive to enter Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE), and then restore from a system restore point or reinstall Windows via the recovery drive.

I disabled hiding of protected/system files to see what's on the E: drive but I don't see any clutter. I ran the disk clean up several time as an admin to no avail. Any tips and suggestions how to clean up the E: drive would be much appreciated! Thanks.

This was exactly what I was looking for and was a great solution. The only thing I would add is that a few weird things happen when you go to copy over the Surface Book recovery/boot image files to the flash drive:

I was nervous that there was something inherent in the files/folder structure that I would mess up by deleting what was on the existing recovery disk, or that it would only overwrite files that it needed to and some existing files would stay and cause issues. To get around this, I opened the folders that were there and cleared their contents, then copied the files over from the folders that matched in the Surface Book recovery files.

All Macs come with Recovery HD installed. To check if you have it, the best way is to press Command and R keys while your Mac is starting, so if your Mac doesn't connect to the Internet to access to Recovery, you have Recovery HD.

I can confirm this. I just received my 27" with 1TB Fusion drive. I also have no recovery partition at boot. If I hold down ALT while booting I just get the Macintosh HD icon and network options. Nothing else.

I have enabled Debug menu in Disk Utility (I used Lion Tweaks to turn the menu on). This screenshot shows a whole lotta crap on the drive INCLUDING a recovery partition, but I have no ay to access it at boot-up.

It all started when I tried to bot my iMac off an external drive. I have an external drive with 10.8.2 installed. It shows up when I hold down ALT after startup chime, but iMac refuses to boot from it. just makes the "" symbol and shuts down after a minute.

A little googling indicates that the Mac OS version on the iMac may be unique to the machine, and I need to install the right version on my external drive before the machine will boot it. But the only way this can be done is via the Recovery drive that comes with the iMac, and that was when I realized - it's not there.

Well, looking at your screenshot, I have to say I have absolutely no idea what all you have there except that it appears to be a mess. You have an abundance of Macintosh HD's in addition to a boot disk, yet everything is greyed out.

The only thing I can think of is using Command + Option + R while restarting; it will take you to Apple's servers and you can access their Disk utility - I'd erase the drive and repartition and then install the OS.

I kept on stubbornly refusing to try the Command+R shortcut after the startup chime, as I saw no reason to. I have 2 other Macs running Mountain Lion and I ususally access the recovery drive by just hoding down ALT.

Ok it works - but even though I updated the Mountain Lion version on my external HD using my new iMac's recovery partition, it still refuses to boot via the external drive. This may be due to other factors. I have an external LaCie drive attached using a FireWire-to-Thunderbolt adaptor. So, now to try using USB ports instead. That's another story for another thread.

Using Command + Option + R to access internet recovery (or Command + R if it will boot into internet recovery with that combo) and simply installing over the top should create a new recovery partition. FWIW, recovery and internet recovery are not quite the same process. My thought is: even if it does not show as a hidden partition, as long as you can access IR, the process is available and working. So, have you tried the key combos just to see if it is available? You wouldn't have to go further, if you can get to Apple's servers and the IR window pops up, it is working - at that point, you can simply quit and restart with your internal.

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