Issue resolved! How was it resolved? What was blocking the resolution? Several attempts were made but this error persisted "The hard drive has insufficient free space. The selected Windows recovery image requires at least 7.77GB of disk space." Resolutions were attempted in both a Windows 10 PC and in Virtual Box 6 running MacOS High Sierra v10.13.6. 3 USB sticks in total were used. All attempts failed! Why did it fail? It turns out that both Windows 10 environments had full (c: drive) hard drives - talk about coincidence! Now, in hindsight one might argue that the message above does indeed speak in terms of 'hard drive' but this is arguably a generic term. Furthermore, the user is engrossed in the act of trying to get a 'hard drive' to negotiate with an external device, in this case a USB drive. The resolution involved understanding that what was full was the c: drive! Not that the USB stick did not have enough free space or was faulty. Dell could definitely improve this tool, it would have saved me a lot of head scratching. In my case, I had to delete the 500MB recovery partition and expand Win10_64.vdi file (the Win10 virtual disk) and add a 200GB partition, then using 'Disk Management', the original 50GB and unallocated 200GB partition could be merged. Who would have thought. Other comments By the way, why would I go here? [URL] - this is windows server The second link, [URL] was good in that when I ran it, I was immediately and clearly told that I do not have space on my internal hard drive to continue. Anyway, I do appreciate everyone's attempts to help, I think that is what community is all about. Remember, this tool is all you need to format the destination drive, no third-party tools are required. Thank you all Alex  
Hello I am new to Dell and to the Windows world. Issue: Dell OS Recovery tool error at 'Step 3: Download and save recovery image' Error Message: "The hard drive has insufficient free space. The selected Windows recovery image requires at least 7.77GB of disk space." My USB Stick is 32GB but despite this I continuously see this message on two different Windows 10 environments. Question: Is it possible that the USB stick is defective? I have formatted it numerous times, in both MacOS and Windows 10 without issue. Should I purchase a proper, brand name USB stick? If you believe that this might resolve the issue, should I purchase a particular brand and size? Please Note: The Optiplex 3020 is the affected machine that will require the Windows USB stick to boot and install from. Its HDD is effectively dead so I can't mitigate much from there.   Thank you. Hopefully someone in the community can advise. BestAlex
Dell OS Recovery tool - incorrectly detecting USB