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Be Prepared Create A Windows 10 Recovery Drive

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11 views

Be Prepared Create A Windows 10 Recovery Drive

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Rick Northorp
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Be prepared Create a Windows 10 Recovery

Drive
Windows 10 offers two ways to create a Recovery Drive: on a USB flash drive and on an optical
disc. This walk-through demonstrates both methods.

By Greg Shultz | January 13, 2016, 5:31 AM PST

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A Recovery Drive lets you boot your system and easily access a number of recovery and
troubleshooting tools to revive a failing Windows 10 system. If you haven't done so yet, you
need to create a Windows 10 Recovery Drive. That way, you'll be prepared should you encounter
a problem with your Windows 10 installation.
In Windows 10, you can create a Recovery Drive on a USB flash drive as well as on an optical
disc. While both procedures produce the same recovery tool, they are created from different user
interfaces. The USB flash drive version is created using a stand-alone tool; the optical disc is
created from the Backup And Restore (Windows 7) user interface. Why Microsoft didn't unify
the process under one roof, I don't know. In this article, I'll show you both ways to create a
Windows 10 Recovery Drive.

Caveat
Regardless of whether you are creating a Recovery Drive on a USB flash drive or on an optical
disc, it is important to remember that a Recovery Drive is bit specific. In other words, if you
create a Recovery Drive in a 64-bit version of Windows 10, you can't use that drive to boot up
and repair a 32-bit version of Windows 10. Likewise, you can't use a 32-bit Recovery Drive in a
64-bit Windows 10 system.

Using a USB flash drive


The USB flash drive you use will become a dedicated Recovery Drive—you won't be able to use
it for anything else. In its base configuration, the contents of the Recovery Drive will require
about 330 MB of space. However, if you choose to include the system files, which will allow
you to use the Recovery Drive to reinstall Windows, you'll need more space. Thus, if you are
creating a basic Recovery Drive, you can use a 1GB USB flash drive. (If you have a smaller
drive, from the old days, you could use it as well.) If you are going to add system files, you'll
want at least a 16GB USB flash drive.

To launch the USB flash drive version of the Recovery Drive creation tool, open the Control
Panel and type Recovery in the search box. When the search is complete (a matter of seconds),
click Create A Recovery Drive, as shown in Figure A. You'll then encounter a UAC, as shown
in Figure B, and will need to click Yes to continue. As you can see in the UAC dialog box, the
program name is listed as Recovery Media Creator.

Figure A
Accessing the Recovery Drive tool from the Control Panel is easy.

Figure B
When you launch the Recovery Drive tool, you'll encounter a UAC.

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In a moment, you'll see the first screen in the Recovery Drive wizard, shown in Figure C. As
you can see, backing up system files is optional. (If you select this option, you'll need a
sufficiently large capacity USB flash drive.)

Figure C

If you choose to back up system files, you can use the Recovery Drive to reinstall Windows.
For this example, I'm going to back up system files. To continue, click Next.

In the next screen of the Recovery Drive wizard, you'll be prompted to select your USB drive. If
the drive isn't already connected to your system, insert it now. Windows 10 will then rescan the
system and display your drive. Since I am backing up the system files, the wizard informs me
that the drive will need to hold at least 16 GB and that everything currently on the drive will be
deleted (Figure D). Remember, this will become a dedicated Recovery Drive. After you select
your USB flash drive, click Next.

Figure D

The USB flash drive you choose to use will become a dedicated Recovery Drive.

In the next screen, shown in Figure E, you are once again warned that the contents of the drive
will be deleted.

Figure E
Windows warns you again that everything on the drive will be deleted.

To continue, click the Create button. When you do, the Recovery Drive tool will format the drive
and begin copying files to the drive, as shown in Figure F. If you are creating a basic Recovery
Disk, the process will just take a few minutes. If you are including a system files, go get yourself
a cup of coffee—it could take as long as an hour.

Figure F
If you are including system files, the creation process can take up to an hour.

When the process is complete, you'll be prompted to delete the recovery partition on your hard
disk if you chose to include system files. You can open the drive in File Explorer so that you can
see the contents, as shown in Figure G. You can then close the Recovery Drive wizard by
clicking the Finish button.

Figure G
When the process is complete, you can check out the contents of the drive.

Using an optical disc


If you want to use an optical disc as a Recovery Drive, you'll use the old System Repair Disc tool
from Windows 7. Keep in mind that while you will use this legacy interface, you will indeed end
up with the same set of Windows 10 Recovery Drive tools as are on a USB flash drive created
with the Recovery Drive wizard.

To launch the optical disc version of the Recovery Drive creation tool, open the Control Panel
and type Windows 7 in the search box. When the search is complete (a matter of seconds), click
the Backup And Restore (Windows 7) link, shown in Figure H.

Figure H
Accessing the Backup And Recovery (Windows 7) tool from the Control Panel is easy.

Now, when you see the Backup And Restore (Windows 7) user interface, select the Create A
System Repair Disc command on the left side of the screen to launch the creation tool. This
process is shown in Figure I.

Figure I
You'll launch the Create A System Repair Disc procedure from the Backup And Restore (Windows 7) user interface.

To start the procedure, click the Create Disc button. The program will begin the process of
creating the disc, as shown in Figure J.

Figure J
Creating a Recovery Drive on an optical disc is a relatively quick procedure.

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