USB install Drive vs USB Recovery Drive I have two USB sticks:


An "installation" drive created with Disk Utility by locating the .dmg file hidden in the contents directory of the Mavericks installer. I used an 8GB stick for that. ( this method )
A "recovery" USB stick ( 1 GB stick ) created with Recovery Disk Assistant. ( this method )


The answer:

Do I need both of them ? If I do, why? If I don't, why ?
They do different things. 

Recovery USB allows you to boot your Mac and run recovery software and "investigate" Tue condition of the software, hardware, etc. To use that to reinstall OSX requires an active internet connection (Ethernet I think) to download an image to install again.

Install USB does a'll that, and can perform a full reinstall with no internet connection.