Windows 10: USB Installation Media and/or Recovery Partition Overhaul???

So as a newbie to this whole process, I’ve been reading various webpages and threads here. I’m still confused to do the following:

1. Create a USB installation drive which includes all the necessary updated drivers.

I ended up using Powershell to add drivers to both boot.wim and install.wim and then attempting to replace the ones created by the MS media tool. I had to replace install.esd with install.swm and install2.swm due to the FAT32 limitations. This causes an error for some reason. Can I only use an install.ESD container file to install? How do I have the install process recognize .swm files when booting from USB?

1. Replacing the factory partition with updated Windows 10 with drivers (less important)

I used diskpart to unhide and copy the whole drive. Is there a way to only pull what I need and update it? And then replace the recovery partition?

I would like this recovery partition to work with any size main partition C: I would like to replace the drive with a larger SSD and don’t know if the recovery partition would only work with the same size main partition which the recovery was created from.

Goal: 1. Recovery Partition with all updated drivers- 16GB or so 2. Main Partition- 400GB or greater depending on SSD size 3. Secondary Partition- 50 GB or so for work related files capable of secure wipe not affecting main drive and install

Please point out any clear to understand links or threads. Thanks.

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:)

 

How To: Create recovery partition.

it worked when i copied all the files of the disk to the recovery partition i created, but i had to use WinPE tab to add the entry.

Type: WIM Image (Ramdisk)
Name: Recovery
Path: Z:\Sources\boot.wim
and hit Add Entry
I tried it in VirtualBox and it worked.
At first, it would add a second "Windows 7" entry to the list, but when the installation is finished, the old one is deleted. (I formatted only C: partition)

 

Recovery Partition in Windows 10.0

Hello,

To create a Recovery Partition, follow the steps below:

• Click Start menu.
• Type Recovery then choose Create a recovery drive.

Plug in an empty USB stick and follow the instructions that will be shown on the screen.

Regards.

 

Installing windows off of a USB stick

Step By Step from vista:
From admin cmd prompt

1. diskpart
1a. list disk
2. select disk 1 (replace 1 with your usb drive)
3. clean
4. create partition primary
5. select partition 1 (replace 1 with your usb drive)
6. active
7. format fs=fat32
8. assign
9. exit

Copy Windows Vista's DVD ROM content to the Flash Drive

xcopy d:\*.* /s/e/f e:\ (d being your vista cd and e being your usb stick)

And that's it, boot off your usb disk