Windows 11 Media Creation Tool

Why does Windows 11 Media Creation Tool reformat my 2TB Samsung T7 Shield Portable SSD to 32GB with the rest unallocated?

Keith Weisshar said:

Why does Windows 11 Media Creation Tool reformat my 2TB Samsung T7 Shield Portable SSD to 32GB with the rest unallocated?

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It didn't need the entire drive.
Keep in mind that the Media Creation Tool is mainly for USB Thumb Drives.

You can create a partition with the remaining space on the T7.


I'm guessing the Media Creation Tool uses Disk Management to create the partition, assuming MCT uses FAT32...
I have a 256GB USB Thumb Drive, and I seem to remember MCT created a 32GB partition on that as well.

FAT32 max partition size - 2TB. If you have a 3TB drive, you couldn’t format it as a single FAT32 partition. Please note that you need the help of third-party partition manager to create such a large partition. If you turn to Windows Disk Management, the largest partition size it helps to create/format is 32GB.

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I guess you tried to use your external 2TB drive instead of a USB flash drive with Windows 11 Media Creation Tool. This Tool is intended to create a bootable Windows 11 USB flash drive in order to install Windows 11 on your computer. You cannot use it to directly install Windows 11 on your hard disk. If you wanted to make your 2TB disk bootable to install Windows 11 but also have other data in, then right-click on This Computer, select Manage to open Computer Management. Then go to Disk Manager and try to expand the partition to take all the unallocated disk space.

@Keith Weisshar


Yep, that's what it did. MCT creates a 32GB FAT32 partition.
I just ran MCT on my 256GB Flask drive to check...

FAT32 max partition size - 2TB. If you have a 3TB drive, you couldn’t format it as a single FAT32 partition. Please note that you need the help of third-party partition manager to create such a large partition. If you turn to Windows Disk Management, the largest partition size it helps to create/format is 32GB.

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It would be easier for us to help, if you explain to us what you're trying to do.

For any disk lager than 2TB you much convert from MBR to GPT partition style. Then you can have a single NTFS (not sure for FAT32) partition with all the available disk space. I learned that when I had a 3TB disk and could only have a 2TB partition in MBR mode. Google (and this forum) is your friend.

Media Creation Tool has a 32GB limit for FAT32. What should I do if I can no longer buy USB flash drives of 32GB or smaller due to shortages of small capacity drives and market for larger drives?

Keith Weisshar said:

Media Creation Tool has a 32GB limit for FAT32. What should I do if I can no longer buy USB flash drives of 32GB or smaller due to shortages of small capacity drives and market for larger drives?

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The installation media the MCT creates is not permanent.
When you're done using it, just format the USB stick with whatever file system you want.
Then you can use the entire USB stick again.

Once you get Win 11 set up how you like and running well... make a backup.
There are a few different backup softwares that are free.

You should however, buy say a 3 pack of smaller USB sticks, just to have on hand. They come in really useful.
Something like this, maybe...

3 pack - 32GB USB sticks

To take this further - if you have a device of larger capacity, it will format it and create a max 32 GB partition on it.

As to how I know it will do this - a couple of years ago I used the MCT to create a bootable UFD, and for some reason it picked one of my internal storage drives instead, and I didn't realize it - until it was done.

My storage drive, a mechanical 1 TB Seagate Barracuda, was now showing in Windows as a 32 GB removable drive.

So, yeah, you can use a larger drive, then when done, do as Ghot said and just delete all the partitions and make a new partition using all the space, then format it and you'll be fine.

Also as he said - I bought a 5 pack of 16 GB drives, and later a 4 pack of USB 3.0 32 GB drives, so I'll continue to use those for now. Multi-packs should still be available here and there - just be sure to buy from reputable sites and buy reputable brands, fake flash drives with incorrect capacities are a real thing on the Internet.

What version is Media Creation Tool currently downloading, do you know?

Should be 22H2 - let me double check though.

The version of the tool itself is 10.0.22621.1, and I'm building an .ISO right now.

But based upon the version number of the tool itself, I'd assume that is for 22H2, as 21H2 is 22000, IIRC.

johnlgalt said:

Should be 22H2 - let me double check though.

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sorry, i mean .525 or updated

Confirmed.

MCT built the .ISO, then I mounted and used this tutorial of ours to verify the contents.

erhanercan said:

sorry, i mean .525 or updated

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525 according to the line under the boxed one.

When running installation, though, if you connect to the internet and allow it to install updates, it should install to current.

Or you can use UUPDUMP to build a current ver .ISO with all updates included.

johnlgalt said:

Confirmed.

MCT built the .ISO, then I mounted and used this tutorial of ours to verify the contents.

View attachment 55406

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22621.525 Thank you so much my friend

spapakons said:

If you wanted to make your 2TB disk bootable to install Windows 11 but also have other data in, then right-click on This Computer, select Manage to open Computer Management. Then go to Disk Manager and try to expand the partition to take all the unallocated disk space.

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Which will not work because Windows puts a 32GB limit on FAT32 partitions.

Maybe MS should make the below warning a click to acknowledge type warning. Many users were dismayed to discover that the Media Creation Tool did exactly what it said it would do and erased the selected drive.

NavyLCDR said:

Maybe MS should make the below warning a click to acknowledge type warning. Many users were dismayed to discover that the Media Creation Tool did exactly what it said it would do and erased the selected drive.

View attachment 55409

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That wasn't the problem in my case, I knew that very well since the MCT was first introduced.

I specifically picked my UFD, but that system had some screwy drivers, so all of my internal drives on SATA connections appeared as removable drives - and somehow, in navigating the menues, whether by a misclick somewhere, or something weird, it changed it to my internal drive.

If the drives were not classified as removable, the issue would never have occurred. And since it was an old 8 GB USB 2.0 drive, I didn't think anything about it taking a bit of time to do it all.

It was only after I realized that the UFD was blank still that I figured out what happened - and after realizing that well over 800 GB of RIPped music was now gone....

I do wish it would make more clear which drive it is going to attack though. That would help.

My suspicion is that I had the drive set, which I had to change manually form the default selection of that internal drive, but I may have used the back button and that may have reset the drive selection and I didn't pay close enough attention to realize it. Either way, though, I was miffed lol.