Reuse Usb Thumb Drive for bootable Win 10 21H2 (repair/reinstall)

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[Deo]

Just a quick pedestrian query: How to repurpose a bootable thumb drive? For repair install and/or full install on other machines?

I have a (multiple) thumb drives from past creations of ‘squirrel away days’, were brand new.

Do I have to reformat/wipe an older thumb drive with 1809 on it, or will MCT simply do it all?

I ask bec as I plugged it in and checked it’s format, it’s showing as NFTS. My PC is UEFI/NFTS. Searching AW posts, I’ve seen that it has to be FAT32? Confused.

I have an iso 21H2 in my d/loads from May, and iso on admin desktop. Can I simply re-run MCT from d/loads,  select ‘usb’? Will it properly overwrite thumb drive, or is some reformat nec before hand? No spare thumbs, hate to waste one sitting in my drawer. Thx.

• This topic was modified 2 years, 7 months ago by Deo.

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I don’t know about MCT, but you can burn the ISO to a drive using Rufus. This will remove the old and replace it to allow the drive to boot.

cheers, Paul

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So, other than figuring out Rufus, there is NO way to reuse an older bootable  thumb drive using MCT as per my OP? (I noticed in Susan’s Sept squirrel away video hers was formatted to Fat 32, and she was probably using a new thumb drive, but I can’t find anything in the forums on what to do in my case). TIA

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Rufus does not need to be installed and is easy to use. Why not give it a whirl and see what format it uses?

cheers, Paul

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Fred

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Paul T wrote:

Rufus does not need to be installed and is easy to use. Why not give it a whirl and see what format it uses?

cheers, Paul

that’s right, when the USBdrive is too large, Rufus makes 2 partitions, 1 fat32 for bootsection (including uefi boot), and the 2nd is ntfs. Works great!

* _ ... _ *

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Deo

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The thumb drive with 1809 (from MCT) on it is only 16GB…?

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Deo wrote:

Do I have to reformat/wipe an older thumb drive with 1809 on it, or will MCT simply do it all?

No, MCT will simply do it all.

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Deo

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Using the Media Creation Tool:
https://www.askwoody.com/forums/topic/using-the-media-creation-tool-windows-10-or-windows-11/

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Deo

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Thanks for link, your instructions there state “Make sure USB flash drive is blank..”, but doesn’t state the format of blank drive.

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Deo wrote:

but doesn’t state the format of blank drive.

The drive gets formatted: FAT32 and then populated with installation media.

Flash drives are fairly fragile. You may wish to keep a few spares on hand.

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Indeed, thx! Can’t find smaller than 64gb here up north. Trying to reuse when I can, taking fragility, cost and risk of possible failure into account…

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Thanks all, confusion in format of usb was from looking at this thread:

https://www.askwoody.com/forums/topic/isos-and-usb-flash-drive-formats/

(For future, I also wondered if I could simply copy the iso that’s on desktop to a blank flash drive in the event an in place repair is needed ie then have access to ‘setup.exe’ file on thumb drive?)

I’ll try MCT of May’s 21H2 download with this old 1809 16gb thumb drive and report back. As it will then be bootable, I probably won’t know if it works until I have to use it.

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You can’t copy an ISO to a drive and have it work – you just get an ISO file.
Rufus will use the ISO file to recreate the drive. It’s free, give it a whirl.

cheers, Paul

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Deo

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Thx Paul! Realized using MCT (mediacreationtool.exe) in my d/loads even though from May would unfortunately give me the latest 22H2 current=missed time frame for a 21H2 thumb drive via MCT. Thank god I have iso downloaded to my desktop!

I searched Ask Woody this aft for hours and found a great explanation written in another thread by PKCano about mediacreationtool.exe will deliver only to current date, NOT by date when it was downloaded. I was going to post for ease of reference for others here. Alas, I tried using Ask Woody search with same term as earlier, and results were night/day from 5 hrs ago. It is no longer showing up (was from 2020/2021?). Ad nausem search again did not provide same result. Can’t find. Was brilliant reference for this topic.

I will indeed use rufus. I hope it will erase 1809 and burn successfully 21H2 without a reformat nec. on my part.

(Anyway to test its functioning without actually reinstalling?) Cheers!

Will mark as resolved when I get there

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