Windows 10: How can I configure Drive D:\ as a Recovery drive?

Here's my system setup:

M.2 - main hard drive (C:\)

10TB HDD - as D:\ drive.

I want to configure my HDD as a backup drive, thus I want My OS/settings retained on the backup. How can I do this?

:)

 

Windows 10 Pro - Recovery with bootable USB stick wipes secondary drive

Hello Yashwanth,

Many thanks for the quick response.

Before recovery the D:\ drive was just a regular SATA hard drive used to store multimedia for server streaming, there was nothing else on this drive.

There was a third drive configured for recovery, but this was just used to store weekly images of the C:\ drive and was left intact.

Luckily we keep regular backups but I'm keen to understand the issue here so I can change the backup routine accordingly (ie: not use the D:\ drive for storing data if Windows wipes that drive automatically during recovery).

Thanks in advance.

 

How can I use a flash drive as a hard drive in Windows 10?

It depends on what exactly you mean with "as a hard drive". Please elaborate.

 

How about installing Macrium, settting it to dual boot (an option in Macrium) and storing the image on the D drive?

You can also set Macrium to store all it's stuff (like the PE image) on the D drive in the advanced settings.

You can even make a small partition (500MB or so) to put the PE image in so as not to confuse things.

Macrium Reflect - Use Macrium Image to set up Dual / Multi Boot

If your C drive gets all messed up you can boot into macrium and restore back your last good backup.

 

I created a 6 GB FAT32 partition at the end of my second HDD. I mounted a Windows 10 installation ISO file and then copied all the files and folders from the mounted ISO file to the 6 GB partition. Then I mounted Kyhi's Recovery Tools ISO file and replaced the Windows 10 boot.wim file in the \Sources folder in the 6 GB partition with the boot.wim file from Kyhi's recovery tools. Then I used EasyBCD to add that boot.wim file to my Windows boot menu. I have a Macrium Reflect image of my SSD saved on the NTFS partition of my second hard drive. I kept the regular Windows 10 450mb recovery partition on my SSD.

I can:
Enter the standard Windows 10 recovery environment from within Windows 10.
Boot the computer from the normal SSD and pick Kyhi's Recovery Tools to boot into.
Enter UEFI boot override and boot directly from the custom recovery partition on the second HDD into Kyhi's recovery tools.

Once in Kyhi's recovery tools I can do a clean install of Windows 10 or I can run Macrium Reflect and restore the backup image to my SSD.

 

@NavyLCDR

Added this Quote to My Recovery Tools Post...

 

Thank you!

 

I just did as you described. I had previously setup a 20GB partition at the end of my 3rd hard drive and assigned X: to it. I put Kyhi's boot.wim in the root then used EacyBCD to create a new boot entry (as per your write-up in a different thread). . Worked great.

Now I mounted the Anniversary Home&Pro X64 iso and copied it to X:, then replaced boot.wim in Sources with the one that was in the X: root (Kyhi's). Deleted and created a new boot entry pointing to X:\Sources\boot.wim. Boots fine from the Win 10 boot menu.

When I look at it now, it shows as two drives. Kyhi-WinPE (G: ) and Boot (X: ). Interesting as I'm getting a twofer, the X: drive I setup is now being accessed as two separate drives. The entire drive as seen when I boot to Windows 10 is G: and the booted drive as X:.





As you said, this allows me to run Setup.exe from G: if I wanted and do a Clean Install of win 10.

Great stuff, I like it. Thanks to you and Kyhi for all the excellent work you've done on this and other concepts.

THIS IS FUN!

Posted this from Firefox while booted into Kyhi's WinPE.

 

X is the drive letter assigned to the RAM-DISK
X was assigned as the boot.wim is loaded into Memory....
X is usually the memory drive

 

X: is the drive letter I assigned to the 20GB partition I added.
When I boot X:\Sources\boot.wim, is that creating a RAM drive (X: )?

Guess it'ws obvious I don't understand what is going on when I boot boot.wim huh?

 

The drive letters you assign in your installed OS do not matter when Windows PE boots from boot.wim. Windows PE will assign it's own drive letters which may or may not be the same as when you boot from the installed OS depending upon the order of the partitions and devices that it finds.

Booting from boot.wim causes a virtual drive to be created in RAM - a RAM disk. I don't know if all Windows PE when booted assign X: to the RAM disk, but Kyhi's does. After the computer boots, the entire contents of X: drive are in RAM and you can remove the USB flash drive (if that is what was booted from) if you want and everything will continue to work.

The physical partition containing the boot.wim file just gets detected when Windows PE starts running and gets a drive letter assigned along with all the other partitions and devices.

Here's a little trick for you - remove the drive letter from the partition containing the boot.wim file in your permanent installed OS and see what happens . HINT: nothing will , everything will boot into Kyhi's recovery drive just like it did before and all the drive letters assigned in Windows PE will stay the same as before.

 

Thanks, that makes sense.
For grins I changed the 20GB from X: to V:. When I booted it I ended up with the same G: and X: as before.

This time EasyBCD did something though as I lost the Windows 10 GUI boot menu. Ended up with this instead:





How do I get the GUI boot menu back?

 

Use the Edit Boot Menu option in EasyBCD and click on the box for Use Metro Bootloader.

When you change or remove drive letters you do not have to change anything in the boot menu because the boot menu runs off the partition identifiers - not drive letters.

 

From an elevated command prompt type> bcdedit /set {bootmgr} displaybootmenu False

 

YES

And the system partition will usually be assigned Z:

To prevent any conflict with any other drive letter assignment