Or you could use various deployment tools to manage the installation over a network.īut if you require the option to run Setup from a bootable drive so you can do a completely clean install, you'll need to jump through the following command-line hoops to split the WIM file into pieces that are under the 4 GB FAT32 size limit.
Or you could attach the ISO file as a virtual DVD drive in a virtual machine. Well, you could just mount the ISO as a virtual drive and run Setup from within Windows.
That extra-large file would be fine for a drive formatted using NTFS, but modern UEFI-based hardware requires a FAT32 drive to boot for a clean install of Windows. The reason for the error is simple: The Windows Imaging format (WIM) file in that download, which contains the compressed files that the Windows Setup program uses for installing the new version, is a little over 4.5 GB in size, which is well beyond the 4 GB maximum file size for a USB flash drive formatted using the FAT32 file system. Instead of completing a simple drag-and-drop copy operation as expected, File Explorer puts up this File Too Large error message:įiles larger than 4 GB won't fit on a drive that's formatted with FAT32 If you're downloading an advance release, as I was, or if you need the previous release, you'll run into an old, familiar, and extremely annoying problem. But that page only includes the latest official release.
That option works fine when you download the Windows 10 installer files using the official Windows 10 Download page, because those files are packaged specifically for use on USB flash drives. Normally, that's a simple process: First, use the Recovery Media Creator to create a bootable USB flash drive then double-click the Windows 10 v2004 ISO file in File Explorer to mount it as a virtual drive and drag the contents of the mounted drive to the bootable USB flash drive. Like many IT pros with a Visual Studio (formerly MSDN) subscription, I downloaded the ISO file yesterday and set about to copy it to a bootable USB flash drive. Check the box for Quick Format (optional but much faster).Ħ.Microsoft has made Windows 10 version 2004 available to the developer community, a couple weeks ahead of its release to the general public.
In Allocation unit size drop down menu select Default allocation size.ĥ. In File system drop down menu select NTFS.Ĥ. Open My Computer screen, locate the USB drive (in my case the drive letter is E:) right-click on it and select Format option.ģ. Insert your USB device into the USB port on your computer and make sure it does not contain any files on it.Ģ.
How to format USB device into NTFS file system format?ġ.
You should have in mind however, that after doing so you won’t be able to use your USB device on such older Windows OS like Windows 95, 98 or ME (if you even remember those). All you need to do is format your USB device to NTFS file system and you’re good to go. Some time later they invented another file system which is called NTFS file system that does not have previously mentioned file size limitation (and also allows for many other functions not supported by FAT32 such as file security, encryption, compression, etc.), so here is the solution for the problem when the file is too large for the destination file system. A reminder for younger people on this topic, which may sound silly today, is that this file system was created a long time ago (when Windows 95 was a revelation) and they didn’t predicted the file sizes that are commonly being used today. The total size of the files that you can copy to a FAT32 drive could be as large as 2TB (or the physical capacity of the drive, whichever is smaller), the size of each individual file may not exceed 4GB. This message means that your USB device is formated with the FAT32 file system which has a built-in limitation on the size of the files that it may contain. The dialogue really says that the file is too large for the destination file system thus won’t copy your file to USB flash drive.
Did you ever try to copy some data to your USB flash drive and got an error message that says you can’t copy the data because file is too large for the destination file system, even though you have enough free space available on the device? How is this even possible and does it make you feel weird?