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Copy to usb flash drive no worky

Posted: Thu Jul 04, 2019 6:37 pm
by woodchip
So my mb crapped out and needed to replace it. I then find out it (aesus prime h370) will only operate with win 10 (what ever happened to being backward compatible?). I have only win 7. So I went to micrbandits website and download their win 10. No problemo, Now the problem is I'm trying to copy it to a flash drive and get message "not enough space on destination drive". WTF? I only need 4.5 gig and flash drive has 27 gig free. Any thoughts on how to get win 10 download transferred to my flashy?


Edit. Found answer (I think). Problem download was 64 bit format As that is what rebuild hd is. I then saw the flashy was 32 bit. Downloaded win 10 in in 32 bit and now is transferring. Next fun will be installing into rebuild comp. hd. Be prepared for my return here :)

Re: Copy to usb flash drive no worky

Posted: Fri Jul 05, 2019 2:34 am
by CDN_Merlin
You just needed to format the USB stick to NTFS 4k chunks.

Re: Copy to usb flash drive no worky

Posted: Fri Jul 05, 2019 5:12 am
by Krom
If you install the 32 bit version of windows 10, you may not be able to run a lot of recent software/games which are increasingly 64 bit only and your system will be unable to use more than ~3 GB of memory (which is a pretty severe limitation these days).

Re: Copy to usb flash drive no worky

Posted: Fri Jul 05, 2019 7:05 am
by woodchip
Can I not start the comp. with 32 bit and then change it to 64 bit? The hard drive is partitioned into a couple of drives with the c drive already at 64 bit ( can't remember if the other drives are also 64bit or some of them were left at 32 bit).

Re: Copy to usb flash drive no worky

Posted: Fri Jul 05, 2019 8:18 am
by Krom
Nope, its one or the other when you install it and then you're stuck with it.

Re: Copy to usb flash drive no worky

Posted: Fri Jul 05, 2019 3:09 pm
by woodchip
OK so we've come full circle. Both sticks I have only one choice and that is 32 bit. Do newer sticks have choice between 32 and 64 bit?

Re: Copy to usb flash drive no worky

Posted: Fri Jul 05, 2019 6:47 pm
by vision
32-bit usually refers to the CPU architecture. I don't think storage devices care about the processor's word size. I don't think you can use a 32-bit operating system to format a device with a 64-bit word space since the OS doesn't know what that is.

EDIT: USB storage is usually formatted as FAT32, which has more to do with how big a file can be. You can put a 64-bit version of Windows on a FAT32 drive. You can also format the USB drive as NTFS, which is what your harddrive is.

It's very confusing and easy to mix up since most of our technology is based on and described in terms of powers of 2.

Re: Copy to usb flash drive no worky

Posted: Fri Jul 05, 2019 8:11 pm
by Krom
The limitation you are probably running in to is that you cannot store a file larger than 2 GB in FAT32.

But more importantly, if you are trying to copy a 4.5 GB file to the drive, this means you are probably trying to copy the base ISO image of the windows installer disk itself to the USB drive, which is totally the wrong way to do it.
See this article for a guide on how to create a bootable USB drive to install windows with:
https://thewincentral.com/how-to-create ... tion-tool/

Re: Copy to usb flash drive no worky

Posted: Sat Jul 06, 2019 5:30 am
by woodchip
Then why can the 3gb+ version of what I'm downloading copy to the usb stick if it is size limited.

Re: Copy to usb flash drive no worky

Posted: Sat Jul 06, 2019 5:51 am
by Krom
There are some unreliable hacks that allow up to 4 GB, probably the drive was originally formatted using them.

Re: Copy to usb flash drive no worky

Posted: Sat Jul 06, 2019 8:18 am
by woodchip
Bought then new and I'm not smart enough to hack them...which is why I come here. Going to best buy and get a new stick and see if they can format it to 64 bit

Re: Copy to usb flash drive no worky

Posted: Tue Jul 09, 2019 12:00 pm
by woodchip
Update. Had to disconnect hd from backup comp and install hd from rebuild one. got the usb to take the win 10 in bootable form with no problem. Might be old comp with win xp was the problem.