Can't create a Win 10 recovery drive

Once Windows 10 is working properly, you can download Macrium Reflect. Then in that app, create a Rescue USB Flash drive of the app. Install a secondary HDD/SSD USB or Internal, and boot off of the Macrium Flash drive and choose to Make an Image File of the Whole disk that C: is on and save the image to your secondary HDD.

snikr said:

I had been having trouble getting a update done on Windows 10 that Dalchina helped me out with. One of the things he told me to do was make a recovery drive (USB drive for me). well the Create Recovery Drive app on my Windows 10 just tells me I have a problem and I can not go any farther. ..... To me it looks like my Windows 10 is mucked up and I might to do a clean reinstall. What does everyone else think?

To create a Recovery Drive Windows needs to find its copy of WinRE.wim (the Windows image file for the recovery environment). This is in one of two places, either in the Recovery partition or in C:\Windows\System32\Recovery. Which one depends on whether your recovery environment is enabled (the default) or if you have disabled it (in which case Windows moves WinRE.wim to C:\Windows\System32\Recovery for safe keeping until it is re-enabled).




If you just delete your recovery partition without first disabling the recovery environment you will loose your only copy of WinRE.wim. After that attempting to create a recovery drive will show this:



If this is the case here, then it is possible to extract a copy of WinRE.wim from a Windows install usb or ISO to replace the one you have lost. For how to do that see:

No UEFI BIOS Access in Windows 10 Pro - post #25

snikr said:

Thanks all for your help. As soon as I get some time I'll try and "repair" my Windows 10 (good thing in runs good for what I am doing now, just can't make a recovery disk). And one question, will a 32 gb usb flash drive be big enough for a recovery drive??

Yes, more than enough - even if you tick the option include system files. System files are only needed if you want the recovery drive to be capable of clean installing windows in addition to all the other recovery functions.

Actually I recommended you use disk imaging... I wouldn't specially mention a recovery drive.

- and you'd just completed an in-place upgrade repair install to fix the problem - should be no need to do another..

Problem installing update KB5021233 post #10

Create Recovery Drive in Windows 10

When users create USB recovery media using the Create a recovery drive utility, the resulting media always contain a bootable copy of Windows RE. This gives users access to troubleshooting and recovery tools when booting from recovery media.

Users can optionally back up files required to perform bare metal recovery. When the option is selected, the following are copied onto the USB recovery media as well:

Windows Component Store
Installed drivers
Backup of preinstalled Windows apps
Provisioning packages containing preinstalled customizations (under C:\Recovery\Customizations)
Push-button Reset configuration XML and scripts (under C:\Recovery\OEM)

Note this provides limited support compared to disk imaging, and excludes personal files.

If your system disk failed, for example, you could not use a recovery disk to reinstate your working environment exactly as was. Disk imaging lets you do just that, provided you image at least all the O/S partitions of course.

dalchina said:

Actually I recommended you use disk imaging... I wouldn't specially mention a recovery drive.....

@snikr still needs to repair Windows and restore the missing winre.wim. If using Macrium Reflect it will need it to be able to build its rescue media.