Using "clean" will delete everything.... although exFat is designed for USB, I have found NTFS more reliable - others may have different experiences, just my FYI. Oh, and don't get despondent each issue has a simple solution.
P.S: In fact an external HDD is preferable for backups IMHO.
So I'm going to lose my Recovery Drive? It's a bit difficult to not get despondent. I've been going through this sort of thing for the entire 2 weeks since I bought the computer. Still don't have it backed up yet. Now I'm having problems with the flash drive that's supposed to help with a system backup which I still haven't been able to create, and now the Recovery Drive which I finally had the first success with is getting deleted so I have to start over again.
The reason I went with a flash drive is because I only will be doing a single backup--the one at the very beginning. I wanted to keep activity on my computer to a minimum so there wouldn't be anything compromised before backing it up. But now I don't think that's possible. Too much internet activity along with unwanted downloads, and now the hard drive space is filling up. It's making a Clean Install option more preferable as things keep getting messed up.
The simple solution was provided to you in post #14. It's going to cost you about $10 for an 8 GB flash drive. You use a 4GB flash drive as the boot/repair drive and use the 64GB flash drive formatted as either NTFS or exFAT to store the image on.
Last edited by NavyLCDR; 29 Jun 2016 at 17:10.
I've done some focusing now and it seems like the best thing to do at this point is to keep the Recovery Drive I've already made and do a clean install of Win10 in the future with the .iso on a DVD which I also already have. Here's my reasoning:
Creating the Recovery Drive already took over an hour to do. It was 7.7GB. To then do it over again after erasing it to reformat the drive would take another hour. Then the backup image (which would now be about 45GB would take perhaps 5 or 6 hours, right? Now, compare that to just keeping my current Recovery Drive and using my already existing Win10 .iso file on a DVD to do a clean install of Win10 in the future (if it became necessary). The only argument I've heard against this is that I'd have to redo all the Win10 settings and then re-download and install the programs I use. Well, changing the settings when I first got this computer took me about 20 minutes this time (it helped that I was already familiar with Win10), and downloading and installing my programs (about 12 of them) took about a half hour, or maybe slightly longer. I can live with that. So, am I correct that my Recovery Drive along with my DVD with the Win10 .iso file on it is all I would need to have a functioning computer again that can go online and download the programs I'd need? If it is, then I'm a happy camper (and computer owner)!
EDIT: I forgot to mention that all my personal files are currently stored on a separate flash drive and are also duplicated elsewhere. They're easy to simply copy over to the computer once it's restored.
Last edited by Delly10; 30 Jun 2016 at 15:08.
It's just the ISO file on the DVD. I haven't checked it lately, but I think it's an .iso file that's something like 3.8GB in size. I thought that was all I needed. I guess it turns out not to be what I need. How do I change it to be what I need? I got the iso file by downloading it from Microsoft's site after I upgraded my previous computer. First, I did the upgrade, then I downloaded again and the iso file saved to the hard drive, and then I copied that over to a DVD in case I needed to a future reinstall.
That's how I got it on the DVD in the first place when I did it before. Unless I'm mistaken, it sounds like what you're saying to do is to take the .iso file that's already on a DVD (after it was originally on a hard drive), put it back on my hard drive, and then burn it back onto a different DVD. How would the new DVD be different from the DVD the .iso file is already on?
What operating system did you burn the DVD with originally? Windows 7, 8(.1), or 10?
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