Making a Windows 10 Installation USB Drive Conundrum.

JLArranz · 3 Weeks Ago

bendipa said:

As for method (b), I've always used it successfully for both Win7 and Win10 installation drives. But now it no longer works for Win 10. As I mentioned I use a FAT32 partition. However I noticed one file, install.esd, size 4,160,744,150 bytes or 4.2 GB failed to copy over . So maybe that size file is too big for a FAT32 format. I kept getting an error or failure to complete at that point, using xcopy.

I'm not expert in ways of doing install media, but 4,160,744,150 bytes isn't 4,2 GiB (when needed, the "i" in the middle means power of 2 and generally power of 1024, instead of power of 10 or 1000; the FAT32 limit is 4 GiB - 1 byte or 4,096 MiB - 1 byte; so your install.esd file could be considered literally "4.2 GB" approx but literal GB (1 GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes) are not relevant, the only reason why powers of 10 are sometimes used instead of powers of 2 is selling physical media with less capacity) but 3967.99 MiB (3968 MiB = 4,160,749,568 bytes or 5418 bytes more, I've done this additional math in case install.esd should be aligned, although Idk any reason why it should) or 3.87499 GiB.

So in normal conditions the file should be copied flawlessly to FAT32. If it wasn't, it was for another reason.

cereberus · 3 Weeks Ago

Create bootable USB installer if install.wim is greater than 4GB

Berton · 3 Weeks Ago

bendipa said:

the FAT32 4GB limit on file size only applies to the Windows system, although having googled I don't see this mentioned specifically to Windows. And I know for a fact that you can transfer files larger than 4GB to a FAT32 partition with Linux, as I did that the other day.

All true, I have a 500GB HDD on the shelf formatted by GPARTED I installed on Linux Mint to FAT32 and Windows can transfer large files to it. As for the mention of the 'net, there was an article published on MSN News on the widgets in the last few days about the issue of FAT32 on Windows. It was supposed to be a temporary solution but was never revisited to correct it in more than 30 years.

For those not using Linux there is a downloadable .iso file used to burn a GPARTED LiveCD to do the same, runs on a 'lite' version of Linux and most of the nearly 100 versions of Linux .iso LiveDVDs will have it.

cereberus · 3 Weeks Ago

Berton said:

All true, I have a 500GB HDD on the shelf formatted by GPARTED I installed on Linux Mint to FAT32 and Windows can transfer large files to it. As for the mention of the 'net, there was an article published on MSN News on the widgets in the last few days about the issue of FAT32 on Windows. It was supposed to be a temporary solution but was never revisited to correct it in more than 30 years.

For those not using Linux there is a downloadable .iso file used to burn a GPARTED LiveCD to do the same, runs on a 'lite' version of Linux and most of the nearly 100 versions of Linux .iso LiveDVDs will have it.

You are confusing the 32GB fat32 partition size limit with the 4GB maximum file size limit.

The 32 GB partition size limit is an artificial limit of Windows and easy to get round e.g. gparted, minitool partition wizardetc.

The 4GB maximum size limit for a single file is a fundamental limit and there is no way around it other than splitting file into small chunks.

The response from Bendipa is incorrect - even Linux cannot transfer files over 4GB (GiB to be pedantic) files to Fat32.

Megahertz · 3 Weeks Ago

cereberus said:

You are confusing the 32GB fat32 partition size limit with the 4GB maximum file size limit.

The 32 GB partition size limit is an artificial limit of Windows and easy to get round e.g. gparted, minitool partition wizardetc.

The 4GB maximum size limit for a single file is a fundamental limit and there is no way around it other than splitting file into small chunks.

The response from Bendipa is incorrect - even Linux cannot transfer files over 4GB (GiB to be pedantic) files to Fat32.

That is correct and is exactly the answer I posted #10

JLArranz · 3 Weeks Ago

Sorry for the "pedantic" but I was attending a true error. 4,160,744,150 bytes = 4.2 GB? Well, yes, maybe. That file not copied into FAT32 for the 4 GB limit? There must be another reason because FAT32 allows up to somewhat more than 4.29 GB... Let's talk about GHz now (I support powers of 2 for MB, GB etc, but it's a particular rule that should be known and nobody knows everything).

cereberus · 3 Weeks Ago

JLArranz said:

Sorry for the "pedantic" but I was attending a true error. 4,160,744,150 bytes = 4.2 GB? Well, yes, maybe. That file not copied into FAT32 for the 4 GB limit? There must be another reason because FAT32 allows up to somewhat more than 4.29 GB... Let's talk about GHz now (I support powers of 2 for MB, GB etc, but it's a particular rule that should be known and nobody knows everything).

GHZ has nothing to do with storage!