Recovery Disk must be greater than 16 GB for some systems

We need to be very specific about what type of recovery drive or backup when we refer to such things.

I normally say a Win 10 recovery drive, but that may not even be specific enough.  Perhaps saying it is a recovery drive created by the Win 10 utility would be better.

But a Windows 10 recovery drive is small if you do not include the system files or around 9 GB if you do check the system files box.  That size should be the same as it came from the factory.  Even some to the Dell recovery factory images are exactly the same as a Win 10 recovery drive.  But, of course, that type of image varies my model and year.

There was a transition period of around a year and a half where the OEM process was being modified.  Computers built six months apart may have different ways of handing the Recovery drive in relation to how the OEM configured the system.  Some systems, it seems, got caught with configurations created during that transition period and don't behave the way new systems should.  The ability to download the current Win 10 install media allowed for such changes to happen.

It would be interesting to see what is on  the drive. I feel they are normally around 9 GB which would include the Win 10 image and the images for the OEM software.

I have always wondered, if you had just updated a build, perhaps the Windows.old folder would be included.

Thanks for the helpful suggestion. 

I still think Microsoft should recommend a disk large enough to work.  I did not realize that the Recovery Disk was equivalent to the Media Creation Tool disk, which I have and which is not system dependent.

Perhaps an informative error message like "not enough disk space" would also be helpful, instead of Microsoft's useless "unable to create recovery disk".

My other 3 W10 computers are able to create a 16 GB recovery disk, even with system files.  Not sure why this one is so much larger.

Hi, David,

I am an Independent Advisor.

Were you using this link to download the file?

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-downlo...

Did you Format the Drives before burning the .iso file to them?

Sorry for the inconvenience this has caused but would you mind using Feedback Hub to let Support Developers know the issue you were experiencing?

Thank you.

Hi David. I'm Greg, an installation specialist and 9 year Windows MVP here to help you.

Did you include System files to reinstall WIndows? Otherwise it only includes the Repair tools. But you can get the same thing via Media Creation Tool at 8gb, with room left over to store other files on the stick.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-10/c...

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-10/m...

I hope this helps. Feel free to ask back any questions and keep me posted. If you'll wait to rate whether my post helped you, I will keep working with you until it's resolved.

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