Windows 10: USB Recovery

Hi,

Some time ago I created a USB recovery drive for each of my family's PCs and laptops.

I've mixed the USBs up!

How do I identify which usb recovery drive goes with which PC?

Regards

Tony

:)

 

USB Recovery

Hi Janie,

Thank you for writing to Microsoft Community Forums.

Please reply to the following questions to get a better understanding on the issue:

• Are you getting any error message?
  
• How are you creating the recovery USB?
  

However, you can follow the steps from Create a recovery drive
to create a recovery drive.

Hope it helps.

Nikhar Khare

Microsoft Community – Moderator

 

Windows 10 recovery USB - which size???

Not even that. What creating a recovery drive does (if you select 'include system files') is to construct the files required to clean install Windows. If this is made on an OEM install these file will include the OEM custom apps and drivers - effectively a 'factory reset' drive. It is extracting an install image from your existing system files that takes the time.

The steps in making a recovery drive are shown in this tutorial...

Create Recovery Drive in Windows 10 | Tutorials

• first you choose whether or not to include system files (step 5 in tutorial)
• next the recovery drive files are constructed (this can take a long time if you include system files)
• only after that is complete will you be asked which usb to use (step 6 in tutorial). At this point you will be told how large a usb you need.

Without system files 512 Mb is sufficient. Including system files it will be just over 4GB.

At which step did you get the error? If you were not asked which usb to use then it was the construction of the system files that failed, nothing to do with what usb you had.

 

How to reformat USB Recovery Drive

Thanks again for helping. Yes, I've found and tried those instructions prior to posting. Nothing seems to work. It is ridiculous that Windows basically trashes a perfectly good USB stick when it creates a recovery disk. Their should be a way to clear it off so you can use it again but I guess not. Probably going to just give up and toss it....they are cheap enough these days.