Recovery Drives are lifesavers and there are many ways by which you can create one. The essence of constantly having a recovery drive is to have a restoration point of your computer just in case something goes wrong, you won’t lose your data or have to start from scratch at installing programs and so forth.
With a recovery drive created, you can easily boot up your operating system directly via your USB drive and access advanced start-up options as well as using different options to troubleshoot whatever problem your computer is facing or recover your system, and even reinstall Windows 10 – it’s a win-win situation after all.
Create a Windows 10 Recovery Drive on a USB Stick
If you’ve ever created a Recovery Drive on a Windows 8 or 8.1 before, the process is the same and things you need include a flash drive with at least 16GB of storage and you’re set.
There are different flash drives out there but it’ll be advisable to grab a faster one that can transfer data at high speed. That said, plug the flash drive into your computer and then head over to the search bar and search the term “Recovery drive”. If your computer is fast enough, you’ll see the result as you’re typing but either way, just click on “Open” from the list of options you see beneath the Recovery Drive application.
If User Account Control or UAC is turned on, you’ll get a prompt asking if you’re sure about what you want to do. Ignore it and click on “Yes”. Also if you’re not using the Administrator’s account, you may be asked to provide the Admin password before you can make the changes. If you have the password, provide it and then click on Yes to proceed.
That will launch the Recovery Drive wizard that allows you to create a Windows 10 recovery drive. Make sure ‘Back up system files to the recovery drive‘ is checked and click Next.
When the above step is completed successfully, the next thing you’ll see is the Recovery Drive wizard which allows you to create the Windows 10 recovery drive. What you do next is to tick the “Back up system files to the recovery drive” checkbox and then click on the Next button.
The Recovery Drive tool will scan your PC for available USB drives. Now select the flash drive that you want to use and click Next.
On the new page, you’ll be able to select the actual USB drive you want and then click on the Next button to proceed to the next screen where you’ll be able to create the Recovery drive.
One thing you should note is that Windows will auto-erase everything on that USB flash drive to make room for the recovery drive and that is why it’s very advisable to ensure the USB flash drive doesn’t contain any personal information that can be lost. Just back up the drive on your other computer or to the cloud before creating the recovery drive.
Then your recovery drive will start to be created. You’ll see a progress bar while it is created.
That’s it! You will get a message that the recovery drive is ready. Click the Finish button and remove the USB drive. Make sure to keep the drive in a safe place so you can use it in the future if needed.
How to access the Advanced Boot Options
Assuming your Windows 10 is experiencing some problems such as the inability to boot into Windows 10 successfully, then you can just boot from the recovery drive that was created earlier.
In order to do this, you’ll need to access the Advanced Options which is where you’ll be able to troubleshoot the problem as well as do a System Restore, System Image Recovery, Automatic Repair Command Prompt, UEFI Firmware Settings, and Windows Startup Settings options.
Since you’re booting from the USB, you’ll be able to restore via the recovery drive you’ve created.
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