[Rrrr]

the drive showing 1.1GB free shouldn't be a factor. The Chromebook recovery utility writes an image to the USB, complete with partition layout and data. It doesn't care what if anything is on the drive, what format, etc. All that matters is that the drive capacity is large enough to support he image being written.

Understood, but when the utility downloaded the image on the Asus, I received a notification from storage manager. I could literally see the space shrinking in the process. 
Anyway, the approach with the W10 machine worked as well. Thanks.