Why my BMW’s USB drive is secretly a Windows 11 rescue disk
Most people create a bootable USB drive to install Windows 11 once, then throw it in a drawer and forget it ever existed. I couldn’t shake the feeling that leaving a nearly empty 32GB drive unused was a waste. So, instead of letting it gather dust, I decided to put it to use by plugging it into my car.
Keeping only a Windows installer on a USB drive is a waste of storage space
Storage is expensive, so grab all the free gigabytes you can
One of the first things you’ll notice when creating a bootable Windows 11 USB drive is that installing Windows 11 takes up surprisingly little space: the slightly older 2024 version I have on my USB drive only takes up 4.4 GB. Newer versions of Windows may require a bit more, but the official minimum recommendation is still only 8 GB.
Now, if you use a real 8GB USB drive to create your bootable Windows 11 drive, you’re effectively using all of the drive’s space for this purpose.
This is how I dual boot Windows and Linux without problems
You are not limited by your free storage space.
However, the very real problem you’ll encounter these days is that you can’t just walk into a store and buy an 8GB USB flash drive for a dollar or two like its realistic value. Many stores don’t even stock them anymore, and newer drives simply aren’t made in such small capacities.
You can technically buy a SanDisk USB 2.0 8GB drive on Amazon for $10, but that’s a pretty horrible value proposition when a much newer and faster Kingston DataTraveler Exodia 64GB USB 3.2 only costs $8. That’s literally eight times more storage for less money.
Even though I didn’t have an 8 GB drive, luckily I had at least one old 32 GB flash drive that I could use for my Windows 11 installer. Once the Windows installation was complete, I realized that I still had over 20 GB of empty space left that I just couldn’t leave unused.
So I decided to do what I do with whatever technology I have and put it to good use, loading a bunch of my old music into it with the intention of transferring it to the 64GB internal storage of my car’s aftermarket Android head unit.
As I transferred the music, a realization dawned on me: What if I just left the USB stick plugged into my car? This way I could store even more music and leave free space on my head unit so it doesn’t slow down.
Now that the drive has gone from being unused to being used almost every day, it no longer feels like a waste of material.
Carrying a Windows 11 USB installer everywhere is actually convenient
Every Family’s Tech Support Hero Needs This
The benefit of keeping a Windows 11 installation in my car is that a fresh Windows installation is never out of reach. I’m the tech support guy in the family, so I get a lot of last-minute “Hey, can you upgrade my old laptop?” » questions during my visit.
What was turning into a months-long ordeal of saying, “Sorry, next time” and forgetting every time quickly became a simple, “Just let me get my car keys.” »
Having a ready-to-use installer means I can troubleshoot and configure new PCs on-site without wasting an hour searching for a USB stick with enough capacity and creating a bootable installer. Between my own machines and those of my family, I’ve already used the USB drive four times in just over a year.
My car’s head unit only supports FAT32 (but the limitation doesn’t matter)
Sometimes an old format is enough
One important quirk I haven’t mentioned yet is that my Android head unit refuses to read any USB drive that isn’t formatted as FAT32.
FAT32 is an old format and its main disadvantage is a maximum file size of 4 GB per file. Luckily, this wasn’t a problem for me: my largest FLAC files are only around 20MB.
For Windows 11 installation, I was surprised to learn that Windows 11 Installation Media tool can detect a FAT32 flash drive and split its large install.esd file into smaller files to bypass the limit. Neat!
At the time I created my bootable drive, Windows only allowed me to format USB drives to FAT32 up to 32GB. You were always able to format larger FAT32 drives with a workaround, but my only larger flash drive was a 64GB drive that I was already using, so it wasn’t even a problem.
Additionally, since motherboards only read FAT32 disks, this means I can use the disk to update the BIOS on a new PC, something I’ve done several times on my brother’s system.
Remove your old bootable USB drive and turn it into something useful
If you have it, use it
If you created a bootable USB in the past and forgot about it, now is the time to recover it and use the remaining space for something else. You can use it for media or as redundant backups for small but important files. As for me, in addition to music, I’m going to load up a bunch of portable utilities to create the truly ultimate mobile tech support USB stick!
6 Uses for the USB Flash Drive You’re Missing
Get the most out of your USB drive.
