Windows 10: Different size of recovery drive?

I'm active in SeniorNet. We have helped about 20 persons to upgrade to Windows 10.


One peculiar thing we noticed is that different PC´s demand different size for the USB Recvery disk after the uppgrade.
We had a range from 4GB to 32GB.


A majority used 16GB.


What is the reason for this difference?

Björn

:)

 

Windows 10 error msg: We can't create the recovery drive. A problem occured while creating the recovery drive.

When one reads the Windows instructions for creating a recovery drive, inserting the USB comes after starting the the recovery drive program. In my case the 'Can't create a recovery drive' message appears even before a USB flash drive is inserted. The
size of the USB has no bearing on the failure it seems. As I previously reported, I have tried different sizes of USB, inserting them before entering the recovery drive program, but it always ends in failure unless I uncheck the system backup box.

 

What Size ??

Previous posts re creation of the recovery drive are ongoing but I would like to know what the correct size for the USB recovery drive should be ??

I have 3 PC's whereby the size required to create this drive has been different in each case - 8 GB, 16Gb and 32 GB. I'd like to understand what it should be; Microsoft say 3 - 6 GB (8 GB USB flash drive would thus suffice). I'd also like to know why
my PC's are giving differing values.

 

because these PCs have different user data?

 

That's a tough one man, I googled that one and this is about all I could find out about the recovery drive.

Creating a USB recovery drive - Windows Help


If you read on down the page it talks about different recovery drive options. I'm thinking the space for each machine is different based on the size of the recovery partition Windows creates for itself during setup. Plus your doing upgrades from old installs so each PC will have different information on each one. During the upgrade process from Windows 7 for example the users entire Windows 7 install is backed up for the first 30 days in case the end user wishes to revert back to Windows 7. If that is the case for your machines then it would explain why your seeing different sized recover partitions. The system is adjusting the sized based on the original size of the Windows 7 install and associated user folder files, would be my answer.

If anyone knows more about this please chime in.

 

I believe the recovery drive only contains files to recover windows 10 and no applications or user data, or?

 

Recovery drive also contains manufacturer specific drivers. The more manufacturer specific drivers a computer has, the bigger the recovery drive will be. Also, just because a certain size USB flash drive is demanded does not mean that is the size of the data written to it. The smallest stand alone Windows install media will barely fit in 4 gb. You pretty much add one driver to that and you now need the next size larger flash drive which is 8 gb - but maybe only 5 gb of it will actually be used.

It also depends on what program is used to create the recovery drive. If it is pure Windows, then only manufacturer drivers and Windows itself will be written to the recovery drive. If a manufacturer's program is used, then likely everything required to restore the entire hard drive back to factory state will be written to the recovery drive - including all the crapware that comes with the computer from the factory.

 

It was all created with the tools in Windows 10.

On the 4GB case I have to check again,