Windows 10: 1 USB drive recovery & back up image solution wanted.

I got a 128GB USB drive to make a win10x64 recovery disk.
When I started, the brand new empty drive had only 110GB free (not 128GB?). OK I only have about 34gb on the concerned laptop used. I made a Recovery disk from the MS windows 10 build- in tools. When it was done, it formatted the drive to fat32, so it only now had a total of 32GB. 22Gb is used for the recovery disk files. So there is also not enough room to make a Recovery Disk Image.
Several questions
- Can I convert the drive back to NTSC and still be bootable and usable for recovery. If so how? Can I use the unallocated 81GB of empty space some how?
- Which is better to have? A recovery disk or a disk image? Though I really want to have both on the same drive. I think this would be best so I get two options in case of disaster. Any way to do it with this 128GB(110Gb) USB drive.
The laptop is just the way I want it. I just finished installing all the stuff I want, and set it up just right for me. But I have not used it for normal work yet.

:)

 

Windows 10 usb recovery and system files back up

If you made a Windows system image at...

"START, Settings, Update & Security, Backup, Go to Backup & Restore (Windows 7)"

...then it can only be restored from a Recovery Environment. This can be got this way...

(1) Hold SHIFT, & click to Restart, or

"START, Settings, Update & Security, Recovery, Restart now (under "Advanced startup").

The computer boots to the recovery partition at the "Choose an option" screen.

(2) Click "Troubleshoot" > "Advanced options" > "System image recovery".

=== OR ===

(1) Insert a Recovery USB drive, & reboot.

This will boot to the BIOS Startup menu.

(2) Choose to boot the USB drive.

This boots to the recovery environment of the USB drive at the "Choose an option" screen.

(3) Click "Troubleshoot" > "Advanced options" > "System image recovery".

Make a Recovery USB drive at "R-Clk Start, Control Panel, Recovery, Create a recovery drive"...





Edit 10:53 PM: It is also possible to mount the system image & assign it a drive letter. Then, individual files may be copied off it.

 

How to create a recovery image/partition in Windows 10

So you can create a USB recovery stick but NOT an ISO CD/DVD image?

 

Often the case. The stated '128GB' is a decimal value (1000='1K') while the reported free space is not (1024='1K')

The two things are quite different and intended for different purposes.

A recovery drive (if you tick the 'include system files') contains everything needed to reinstall Windows to original factory specs. If the manufacturer has added their own custom drivers/utilities these would be included as part of those 'system files'. It also includes other repair tools, restore a system image being one of them. It is always formatted as Fat32, to a maximum size of 32GB. Converting it to ntfs would make it unbootable.

A disk image can be used to restore your PC to the state it was in when you made the image. The problem is that the built-in 'Backup & restore (windows 7)' will only allow you to put the system image on an ntfs formatted hard drive (internal or USB). It won't accept a memory stick.

Your best solution would be to have two USBs, a smaller one as a recovery drive and your large one for a system image. You should look for more versatile and flexible imaging solutions, Macrium Reflect (free) is the preferred choice of many on this forum. You would need another small USB for Macrium's recovery boot media.

 

The cost of a 128GB USB flash drive, approximately $25-$30, versus a 1TB external USB 3.0 drive, approximately $60-$70, should be considered.

Backing up, even with Macrium (Best choice), to a thumb drive is painfully slow, and you would get 2, maybe 3 images on it....nothing else. 1TB external 3.0 is SATA @ 6GB/s, with plenty of storage for daily, weekly, monthly backups......plus other partitions for other purposes.

OP should consider his choice of media. Small 2-4GB thumb for Recovery and another for Macrium Rescue.....External for backups and other data.

 

I believe the windows Recovery Drive will require a 8-16GB USB, particularly if you include system files. I would agree that an HDD USB is best for system images.

 

Firstly, the 110 GB is just due to way windows calls 1 GB as 1024*1*1024 bytes but USB seller calls is 1000*1000*1000. Actually usb seller is correct strictly and windows wrong but always been that way.

You cannot format drive as NTFS (NTSC is a USA TV format - alleged acroynm for Never Twice Same Colour*chuckle).

You can format whole drive as fat32 but need to use a third party tool like

How to Format Hard Drive to FAT32 File System up to 2TB

However, if you create a backup image to same drive, you need to use option to split image to have files less than 4GB (maximum size for fat32 files).

As another poster says, if you are going to use usb drive as backup, probably better to format as NTFS or EXFAT, and use a smaller (say) 2GB stick.

A bigger concern is a usb stick is not as reliable as an external hard drive. I would invest in a large capacity hard drive - you will never regret the cost.

 

I use a sandisk extreme and it writes at 100 MB/S on USB3 and is faster than my hdds!

I have an older SSD I use as an external drive and that motors at 250MB/S on USB3.

 

Wasn't quite sure about that size, for Recovery, but the concept is the same.

I think we're all in agreement that an External is best for backups, and leave the thumbs for Recovery and Macrium Rescue.

 

And let's not forget the option to make a macrium boot entry (or put it in a hard disk partition with it own boot menu entry) which means you only need thumb drive if hard disk fails or boot sectors and/or windows drive get badly corrupted.

Actually, I managed to do that that quite spectacularly recently as I was installing Windows 10 as a second dual boot option, but accidentally turned off pc half way through - when I tried to restart, PC tried to carry on installation and failed, saying try again.

The problem was that it had set the new install as the default boot drive, and upon restart, it would only boot to that trying to continue the install (it does not revert to booting to the boot menu until installation is complete, and it would not complete)!

I even tried setting windows boot manager as the default but it was determined to continue to reinstall Windows and just ignored the bios setting. It was only by booting from a Macrium Rescue drive could I fix things!

 

A nice part of the boot option is if you click restore for an OS image you are currently booted to, it will prompt you to restart and pic it up automatically from the boot entry.

 

You can manually set up a bootable USB flash drive with NTFS format, but it is only bootable in legacy BIOS (CSM) mode.

To me, the best option is the external USB hard drive or SSD. Mine is set up with a custom FAT32 recovery partition that boots into Kyhi's recovery tools that also has the Windows setup files extracted to it as well. It also has a large NTFS partition containing system images as well as individual file backups. I can boot from my USB hard drive, make a backup image, restore a backup image, mess around with the partitions on the internal drive of the computer, connect to the internet, or just reinstall Windows. I can also do upgrades or DISM system repairs with it.

It boots in any computer that allows booting USB hard drives, legacy BIOS or UEFI.

 

This sounds like what I need. Could you outline the steps you took to do this. Add some links to the tools you used. I have been a fan of Acronis Disk Director 12, and True image, but they are getting a bit long in the tooth. They are not good with UEFI, or GPT for example
Thanks

 

Do you want the NTFS formatted USB flash drive that will only boot under legacy BIOS or CSM mode, or do you want the dual partition USB hard drive?

 

I am not sure what would be best.
This is for a friends new HP laptop. I think I would like the HP to be able to boot from the USB drive. Then use tools there to be able fix the HP boot process on the internal drive or reload a drive image.