
So we’re talking about the “ultimate thin image,” straight from the Windows 10 media. And if you’re patching the image yourself (don’t bother, just download updated ISOs periodically), you have to go through great pains to get the size back down again (component cleanup, export, etc.). Of course that assumes you aren’t adding anything to the Windows image yourself (e.g. (Remember Compact OS, which I talked about back in 2015? It’s still around, just not used too much.) 16GB) drives, but those never really worked out very well because the OS would typically start off at about 8GB (decompressed) and slowly grow from there (a.k.a. Over time, there were a variety of efforts to try to squeeze the OS so that it could fit on smaller (e.g. Over the years, there have been plenty of discussions about the size of Windows images.
