Windows 10: Recover Windows 10 from a Recovery Drive

How to: Recover Windows 10 from a Recovery Drive

How to 'Recover from a drive' to Reset Windows 10


Information A recovery drive can help you troubleshoot and fix problems with your PC, even if it won’t start.

A recovery drive is a USB version of a system repair disc with an option to include the system files to be able to also reset Windows 10 from the recovery drive.

When you recover Windows 10 from a drive, here's what will happen:

• All personal files and user account on your PC will be removed.
• Any apps and programs that didn't come with your PC will be removed.
• Windows 10 will be re-installed (reset) from the recovery drive connected to your PC. (unless your PC came with Windows 8/8.1 and a recovery partition from your PC manufacturer, in which case it'll reinstall the version of Windows that came with your PC).
• If you've repartitioned your system drive, this will restore its default partitions.

This tutorial will show you how to reset Windows 10 from the recovery drive connected to your PC.




Here's How:

1. recovery drive that was created with the "Back up system files to the recovery drive" box checked.

2. Choose your keyboard layout. (see screenshot below)



3. Click/tap on Troubleshoot. (see screenshot below)



4. Click/tap on Recover from a drive. (see screenshot below)


Note If you chose not to back up system files when you created your recovery drive, Reset this PC and Recover from a drive won't be available.





5. Things will now start getting ready. (see screenshot below)



6. Click/tap on either Just remove my files or Clean the drive fully for how you want to clean your drive. (see screenshot below)


Note Just remove my files = This performs a quick format, and doesn't take long. Your files might be recoverable by someone else since they are only marked as deleted. You would use this option if you are keeping your PC.

Clean the drive fully = This performs a secure erase to fully clean your drive by overwriting your files so that they can't be easily recovered. This can take several hours to finish. You would want to do this option if you are recycling or selling your computer.





7. Click/tap on Recover to begin. (see screenshot below)



8. Recovering Windows 10 will now start. This will take a while to finish, and your PC will restart a few times during the process. (see screenshots below)



9. When finished, select your Country or region, App language, Keyboard layout, and Time zone, then click/tap on Next. (see screenshot below)



10. Click/tap on Accept for the Windows license agreement. (see screenshot below)




11. You can now pick up at step 15 here (click on link) to finish setting up Windows 10.




That's it,
Shawn


Related Tutorials

• How to Create a Bootable USB Recovery Drive in Windows 10
• Create Custom Provisioning Package used to Reset Windows 10 or Create Recovery Drive
• How to Reinstall Windows 10 with this media
• How to Reset Windows 10
• How to Refresh Windows 10
• How to Clean Install Windows 10
• How to Custom Install Windows 10
• How to Do a Repair Install of Windows 10 with an In-place Upgrade
• How to Start Fresh with Clean up-to-date Installation of Windows 10

:)

 

Recover files from Flash drive

According to me, the best flash drive recovery software which i have used and recovered files easily. It is very easy to use and within few steps you can recover data from flash drive. Recover Corrupt Flash Drive Mac | | Bill Hoyer Systems

 

Recover files from Flash drive

Does not work on a windows pc which is what the OP probably intended

windows by default does not have HFS and HFS+ based hard drives.
Able to perform retrieval on both HFS and HFS+ based hard drives. and so will not work with windows

thanks for the effort

 

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Recovering Windows using a recovery drive

Hello,



Thank you for writing to Microsoft Community Forums.



The recovery drive can be used to recover Windows to a working state even if the PC is not booting. However, if the recovery drive is overwritten there is no chance to recover it back.



The drive can be recreated using a new USB or the same USB. However, the contents of the recovery drive will be deleted and it can be used to recover the system to a state when the recovery drive was created.



For more information on creating a recovery drive and recovering the PC using the same drive refer the articles

how to: Create a Recovery Drive for reinstalling Windows 10 and

Recovery options in Windows 10.



Also, for creating the recovery drive no changes are needed to be done on the Windows recovery tools drive. However, in order to know more about the D drive on the system, I suggest you to post a screenshot of the disk management.
Refer the article
How to include a screenshot in your post.



Hope it helps.



Regards,

Prakhar Khare

Microsoft Community – Moderator

 

Missing Recovery Environment

Hi Alan,

Here is a link containing several useful suggestions to help you recover Windows 10. Since the error message that you got tells you to insert your Windows installation or recovery media. We suggest the perform the steps listed under
Use a recovery drive to restore or reset your PC or you can also follow the steps under
Use installation media to restore or reset your PC. Please see the link below for more details:

Recovery options in Windows 10.

Regards.