Create Recovery Drive in Windows 10  

If I create a Recovery Drive, and choose to copy the system files to it, will it delete the recovery partition on my desktop hard drive? Can I have a Recovery Drive and the recovery partition?

I thought I read that somewhere, but I can't find it. I might have read it wrong.

Thank you for your time.

I recently upgraded from 8.1x64 to Win10 Home, and I thought it might be useful to create a recovery drive. But this won't happen, regardless of the checkbox status for "Back up system files to the recovery drive." All I get is ... "Some required files are missing. To troubleshoot problems when your PC cant start, use your Windows installation disc or media. "

When I upgraded I simply ran "setup" within the Win environment from a USB which had been loaded using the Media Creation tool. Since this USB happens to be bootable (though I didn't use it in that manner), will it have all the features of a Recovery disk? Maybe that's all I need?

Suggestions?

Brink said:

Hello @Telos,

If you like, you could create a Windows 10 installation USB to use instead. You can also use it as a recovery drive.

Create Bootable USB Flash Drive to Install Windows 10 | Tutorials

IIRC, this is what I did to run the in-place upgrade, so that USB should be fine.

In addition, I would recommend to keep updated system images to have available to restore as needed. Macrium Reflect is a good program for this.

Backup and Restore with Macrium Reflect | Tutorials

Agree. I'm a long-term user. But I'm also a long-term tweaker... but since coming to W10, I've backed off considerably in that area... still I find the USB tool attractive just in case an old tweak bites me.

Thank you 👍

I have Windows 10 64 on a laptop. I wanted to follow this tutorial but unexpectedly got into a real hell of a problem. After much google search I decided to post here.

I followed the tutorial as written: After clicking on "recovery drive," and giving permission, my computer opened the recovery drive window, saying "create a recovery drive." I chose to click in the box "back up system files to the recovery drive." So far so good. I inserted a Lexar 32G keydrive especially after it said it will require 16GB (I had a 1GB key so I did not use that). Prior to this, I had reformatted my Lexar key drive and noted that 29/29GB was available.

Anyhow so I put the key drive in the square thing (sorry, don't know the term for the square thing, USB port?) and it was detected, as in Step 6 (the red arrow). Then it began the process of creating the recovery drive, or so I thought, and I figured it would take a while so I went to the kitchen for a few minutes and came back and this is what I saw. See picture.



In case the picture doesn't show up, it's an empty file explorer with a little pop up next to it saying "Please insert a disk into removable disk (F:)."

I clicked cancel, it popped back up. In fact, I noticed it kept popping back up every 2-3 seconds no matter what I did. I opened task manager to cancel whatever process might be doing it, it did not help.

I tried to eject usb drive safely, wasn't working, so physically removed it, then the popping window stopped. Inserted the usb key again, into another port (have only two), same problem, right away.

Turned PC off, put the key drive in first, then started the windows. Same thing. As soon as Windows start, same pop up doing it again. I was able to open a window on top of the recurring pop up, hoping to format the key drive or something but the key drive does not even show up under My PC, as if it's not recognized.

The USB ports do work because my other 1GB key drive works.

I got the PC less than a year ago and the key drive has been barely used either. I'm totally frustrated and baffled. There was no mention of this problem in your tutorial.

Can you help me?

Thank you very much Brink for your quick reply.

Yeah, I just put it in my other PC and same thing. Sucks. I got the key drive two years ago but used it only like once every 3-4 months. Should have probably run some kind of hard drive health on it before to make sure it was good (although I don't know how good those softwares are).