How To Create A Recovery Drive In Windows 10

Recovery drives are an essential weapon in case you run into problems with your PC. The tool that can make this happen in Windows 10 is called Recovery Media Creatorand Microsoft has kept it almost the same as it was in its previous operating system: Windows 8.1. In this tutorial we will show you how to use the Recovery Media Creatorto create a recovery drive on a USB memory stick or on an external hard drive.

How To Start The Recovery Media Creator In Windows 10

The first thing you need to do is plug in to your Windows 10 computer, the USB memory stick or external hard drive on which you want to create the recovery drive. Once Windows has detected it correctly, go to the Cortana's search box and typerecovery.

From the results list click or tap on "Create a recovery drive".

Another method to open Recovery Media Creator is from the Control Panel. Simply open Control Panel in icons view and click or tap on Recovery. Now you will be presented with three recovery tools, from which you must choose "Create a recovery drive".

And yet another way to get Recovery Media Creator started is from the Settings app. The fastest way to open Settingsis by pressing the WIN + I keys on your keyboard, but there are also other creative ways to open it here. In the Settings window type"recovery" in the search box and click or tap on "Create a recovery drive".

A UAC (User Account Control) prompt will appear, which will ask you if you permitRecovery Media Creator to make changes to your computer.

Click or tap Yes to start Recovery Media Creator and continue the process.

How To Create A Windows 10 Recovery Drive With Recovery Media Creator

Now, the Recovery Media Creator window opens. It shows some brief information about what it is and what it does.

You need to keep in mind that the Windows edition and the recovery drive edition must be the same, or else the files on the recovery drive won't be of any use to you. The 32-bit recovery drive can only fix only a 32-bit Windows, and the same is true for the 64-bit edition.

NOTE: For the 32-bit Windows edition you will need to have a recovery drive with at least 4GB of space and for the 64-bit Windows you will need a minimum of 8GB. If the Windows was preinstalled on your computer, that will require an hard drive with up to 32GB of free space.

Also, you will see a checkbox that says "Backup system files to the recovery drive". If you enable it, this option will copy all of your system files on the recovery drive, otherwise it will copy only the basic system files.

Choose the option you want and click or tap Next to continue. Depending on what you chose previously, you are asked to select an USB flash drive that has a certain minimum storage space. Make sure you don't have any data left on the drive, because it will all be erased in the process.

Select the drive on which you want the recovery tools to be saved on and click or tapNext. You will receive a warning message that everything on the drive will be erased. This is your last chance to save the data found on it. When you are ready to start the process, click or tap Create.

Now the drive will be formatted and the system recovery tools copied on it. This process could take from a few minutes, up to 10 or more minutes if you are also copying Windows 10 system files. This will also depend on the speed of your recovery drive.

When the recovery drive is created you will be informed about it. Now you just need to click or tap Finish and that's it.

You now have a recovery drive which can get you out of trouble in case your Windows decides not to listen to you anymore.