INstall.wim maximum size and Bootable USB to bootable ISO help

SIW2 said:

There isn't a max size for install.wim as far as I know.

If you are using fat32 filesystem on your usb drive - there is a 4gb limit on file size.
In that case you could split the wim , or just use exfat filesystem instead.

Easiest way is to use something like Rufus to extract the normal MS iso file to usb.

Rufus - Create bootable USB drives the easy way

Then replace the normal usbdrive\sources\install.wim with your larger one

Usb drive will not boot from an exfat or ntfs partition of uefi as most are.

What you can do is have a bootable fat32 partition and an ntfs partition

This link gives general idea

USB Flash Drives, UEFI and large WIMs | Mikes Tech Blog

Samuria said:

You can compress the wim file

Not by much - maybe 25%.

jimbo45 said:

Hi there
Thanks for that info

I always wondered why I couldn´t get a 64GB USB drive to boot on a UEFI computer whereas an 8GB drive worked just fine.

Did your suggestion and partitioned the drive

Booted just fine.

Nice still to learn something new everyday.

There is another "get around" -- you can with a USB3 drive create both a Winpe (Macrium recovery) and a Linux live distro on a larger (better have a USB 3 one) device .

If the boot partition (/boot) is made XFS or EXT4 you at boot will get a prompt to select either the Macrium recovery (WIN PE) or the Linux Distro -- good to have both tools on a reasonably fast USB device. The Macrium recovery should be NTFS and the Linux can be any file system the distro supports. There's no reason why you couldn't do this method to have Windows install partition as well. Linux only needs about 4GB (if that for live distro) so plenty of space for the rest -- /boot only needs to be about 500MB as well.

You could also add another bootable tool like a partition manager on it (but with the live Linux distro you can install GPARTED anyway).

The Linux /boot will support multi booting from the USB3 stick -- I've found this an excellent "recovery" system used loads of times.

Thanks though about the exfat thing on UEFI.

Cheers
jimbo

Your alternative solution sounds like a Heath Robinson solution - .

For the adventurous, or incurably curious, Kari has a tutorial on dealing with .wim files of 4GB or greater size: DISM -- Split install.wim file. Check it out. Fun stuff!
--Ed--

I don't understand why people think that the USB must be formatted with FAT32, This restriction is only applied to the UEFI Firmware prior to version 2.0.
My PC is 5 year old MSI-Z77 and all bootable are formatted with NTFS. The only restriction is: All disks/USB must be MBR disk type to support both UEFI and MBR. See screen shot:

1. PE_BAKE (customized version of PE similar to KYHI's) set as Active for both MBR and UEFI boot (Disk 2).
2. Win10 Installation UEFI only since only one partition can be set Active on the same internal disk (Disk 2). To be able to boot with MBR, set this partition Active.
3. Macrium Rescue is on internal disk (Disk 3) Set Active for both MBR and UEFI boot.
4. Another version of Windows 10 Installation on a Removable Sandisk. Formatted with NTFS since the Install. wim is 4.7GB, slip stream with the latest update of Version 17133.73

NOTE: If the USB does not boot, might need to run from admin command: bootsect /nt60 X: where X: is the drive letter of the USB
NOTE 1: When ever a new version is available, just use 7-ZIP, set it to override to unzip all the files from ISO. No need to use Rufus , No need to re-format.