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I'm following along with the Windows 11 Clean Installation guide. I've downloaded the installer onto my D drive, which has tons of space, and I've inserted a blank USB flash drive. Installer runs fine, but I get to Step 4.5 ("Select the bootable USB flash drive...") and I'm not given the option to select any drive.
I click Next and I'm told that C drive doesn't have 8GB of free space. (Which is why I want a clean install on it. Lots of old stuff.)
How can I install a bootable install of Windows on a USB drive if I don't get the option to install it on a USB drive?
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I am sorry.. the error message is misleading.. 9.83 GB is still quite tight.. this operation itself requires 8GB on the system drive, but taking into consideration Windows also needs to have some free space to run properly, see if you can clear a few more GB if possible.
Hello, this is Emily.
Unfortunatley you do need at least 8GB of free space on your system drive (not your D drive) to make this bootable USB drive. That is because the media creation tool first has to download the .iso to your system drive and process it and mount to your flash drive. There's no way around this unfortunately.
Try to manually delete as much files as possible. You can delete anything located in your personal folder like desktop, documents, photos, etc. You can also use the Disk Cleanup app to clean up as much as possible. If it is absolutely impossible to do so, you can create the USB on a different computer, hopefully you can get a friend or family to help. Once you have it made, the clean install will go smoothly.
I click Next and I'm told that C drive doesn't have 8GB of free space. (Which is why I want a clean install on it. Lots of old stuff.)
Windows setup will have to format, if not delete the partition. What is the difference between this and getting rid of some old stuff right now?
I have 9.83GB free on the C drive and 14.6GB free on the USB drive.
Getting this:
The instructions say I just need 8GB.
my D drive, which has tons of space
Make use of it by moving a few GB from C to D.
