Solved Recovery drive and restore point

Dear experts,
I have done a recovery drive Using an USB of 128 GB formated NTFS, and once finished, , file explorer, properties, indicates for the USB: format FAT32, used space 16 GB, free space 32 GB.
But it is a 128 GB USB?
Is this normal?
I have also done a restore point, including system files, and it only takes 7 GB, is this normal?

Thanks

You may have bought a fake usb stick?

Are you sure it says

Asus S5606 said:

... USB: format FAT32, used space 16 GB, free space 32 GB.
But it is a 128 GB USB?

Click to expand...

Are you sure it says 'free space' is 32, not 'capacity'? If so, what does 'capacity' show? More likely it shows 32GB capacity, as that is a Windows formatting limit.

Yes I meant used space 16 GB, free space 16 GB, total space 32 GB
Why this difference between capacity of USB, 128 GB, and capacity indicated, 32 GB?
Why the recovery tools changges th format from NTFS to the old FAT32?
A restore point , including system files, of just 7 GB is not too small?

FAT32 file system cannot have a partition larger than 32GB. You need to format the flash drive NTFS to get the full capacity

Asus S5606 said:

Why the recovery tools changges th format from NTFS to the old FAT32?

Click to expand...

What Recovery Tool did you use?

When bought, USB sticks are usually FAT32 up to 32 GB, and exFAT greater than 32 GB, so your 128 GB drive would have been exFAT originally probably.

Making a Windows Recovery drive will partition and format the drive to it's own requirements. I forget what that would be on a 128 GB drive.

You need to Re-format the drive to exFAT or NTFS.

Maybe you can try extending the 32GB partition with MiniTool or similar app. Doing a Recovery Drive is costly in time, I'd try cloning it to other pendrive (you can use imaging or partition managing apps), test the clone, extend the partition, test it, add new contents, test it. Idk how much picky is this Drive.

---------------------------------------

If it doesn't work there're several utilities (possibly the most popular is Ventoy, I use WinSetupFromUSB myself) to combine several boot disks in one USB stick (I combine the Windows 11 Recovery Drive and several Macrium Rescue Disks), but they can also be used to leverage the pendrive disk space. When booting from this media I'm displayed a list to choose from, where I've named each item myself. If there's only one item to choose from, I suppose you get a one item list and just pressing Enter boots it, but I've never done that.

Doing a media like this isn't super-easy. For example I use ImgBurn to do the needed iso file from the Recovery Drive done by Windows 11. My process is as follows:

- Do the Recovery Drive in a 64 GB stick.
- Do the iso file from it.
- "Format" the same USB stick for use with WinSetupFromUSB (Idk the mechanics of Ventoy if you prefer it; using "the same" stick is just for economy, you can use another if you prefer).
- Add the Recovery Drive iso.
- Add the other isos if you have more.



You can use the free space for more contents provided you leave alone the tool and disk(s) files. You may use additional folders to avoid accidentally overwriting files, but it isn't mandatory.

Ok, so windows recovery disk always reformats usb to FAT32?
and a restore point, including system files, that only takes 7 GB, is normal?

Asus S5606 said:

and a restore point, including system files, that only takes 7 GB, is normal?

Click to expand...

Quite possibly - I started SR the other day, and the first RP it created is only ~2GB. It is not storing (ie copying) the whole system, merely keeping track of subsequent changes. This is best explained here, where the commenter writes "A restore point is a snapshot. A snapshot is conceptually the system at a point in time, but it doesn't actually copy the entire system at that time. It means that future disk writes need to copy the previous contents of the disk, so that the original version is available. What this means is the space used for a restore point starts at zero, and grows as more changes are made to the system..."