What size thumb drive for installing drives

I'm not 100% clear on what you are asking, but it sounds like you are wanting to wipe a computer and start from a fresh install. To simplify this process, you are wanting to pre-download all of the required drivers for this computer to a USB flash drive so installing them on the freshly installed version of your operating system is quick, easy, and clean, correct?

If this is the case, then a 16 GB flash drive should have more than enough space for all your required drivers. The total space required for the driver installation files will of course depend on what exact hardware the computer has, but I have done this with as small as a 1GB flash drive before. A 16 GB drive should also allow you plenty of space to have some software installation files (web browsers, plugins like Flash and Java, etc.) readily available as well.


As an added note, I highly recommend you install the motherboard chipset drivers first, followed by storage controllers, video drivers, audio drivers and networking. Anything left over can usually be installed in pretty much any order after that.

drivers for your entire machine don't exceed 400mb so you should be fine with the smallest 512mb one

gpu drivers ~160mb
sound drivers ~50-100mb
chipset drivers ~10-20mb
rest is not worth mentioning

now if you wanted to have updated windows 7 installation on your thumbdrive along with drivers, you're looking at something closer to 4,1gb (so you'd need 8gb drive)

if you're interested in making fully updated windows installation on a thumb drive let me know, it takes some time and patience but it's quite simple and straightforward to do

Isaiah,

This is a new build. Im building the computer in a place that has no internet connection. I want the latest drives on the new build but because I have no internet connection at this place I have to download the lastest drives on to a thumb drive from a computer that has internet acess then download the drives onto the new build. So what I wanted to know is how small of a thumb drive can I get away with to download the motherboard drivers and all that stuff.

Best answer selected by Slickrick214.