Why won’t my Windows 11 ISO copy to an 80 GB USB drive?

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Asked By MellowPine42 On

I'm trying to put a Windows 11 disk image (ISO) on an 80 GB USB drive. The drive appears to be formatted as exFAT and has plenty of free space, but Windows says the file is too large for the destination. Other files copy normally. Do I need to reformat the drive or use a different method to put the ISO on it?

3 Answers

Answered By SilverKite28 On

Another option is Ventoy. Install Ventoy onto the USB once, then copy ISO files onto the resulting storage partition. It’s useful if you want to keep multiple bootable images on the same drive, but installing it will repartition and erase the USB, so back up anything important first.

Answered By CopperLynx7 On

First, verify the drive’s actual file system by right-clicking it in File Explorer, choosing Properties, and checking the File system field. FAT32 has a 4 GB per-file limit, so a Windows ISO or its install.wim file may exceed that. exFAT and NTFS don’t have that particular limit, so if it really is exFAT, the error may be coming from a different drive or a corrupted partition setup.

Answered By OrbitingMango5 On

If the goal is to create a bootable Windows installer, don’t just copy the ISO as a normal file. Use a tool such as Rufus to write the ISO to the USB. Rufus can handle the large Windows installation files and configure the drive to boot properly.

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