Windows 10 recovery drive requires 32 gigabytes. Is this normal?

cxf

Jan 6, 2019
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I recently bought a 16GB USB stick to make a recovery drive for my PC. What I saw online was that you need 4-16GB for it and it varies per computer.
When I ran the recovery drive tool it loaded for a really long time and told me that I need USB stick that can hold at least 32 gigabytes.
Is there a way to somehow make it take up less space? If there isn't, would an USB stick that's exactly 32GB be large enough since the amount of usable space is usually smaller?

Edit: [strike]One more question that I forgot to ask. Is a USB 2.0 stick good enough or should I get a USB 3.0 one. The 2.0 stick I saw had a 10mbit/s read speed and the write speed is probably even slower.[/strike] I found some good cheap 3.0 ones
Thanks for your replies. I don't know what's the proper way to thank here so I'm just editing it in.
 
Solution
I'd think 32 GB would be plenty big enough. The local Microcenter store sells them for $3.50, so they're very inexpensive.
I just created a "Recovery" USB, via the Windows function. That took FAR too long.
Never done this before, because I use other means of backup and recovery.

Using a 32GB USB, this is what resulted:
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32GB was enough. I don't remember the exact amount of data it wrote but it was around 15GB. It probably went just barely over the 16GB stick's limit.
I recommend getting a USB 3.0 stick. Make sure that they actually list the speeds because I was close to buying a USB 3.0 stick that was actually slower than a USB 2.0 one.
It took me around 2 hours 20 minutes which is insane and way longer than I expected it to take. It's also the reason I recommend getting a USB 3.0 stick.
 


2 hrs 18 mins was how long it took to do a full clone recovery of a 1TB drive image (605GB actual consumed space), across the LAN, to a new 1TB SSD.
2 hours to create a 6GB "Windows Recovery" was far too long.