Windows 10: Win 10 recovery USB disk

I am trying to create a recovery USB drive from which I can install Windows 10 fresh, if needed. Or quickly restore system images in case of a drive issue. There are a couple of things I am not clear about.

Background:

I have an ASUS laptop that came with Windows 8.1, UEFI (upgraded to Windows 10 at the moment). Initially, I created a Windows 8.1 recovery USB and reinstalled Win 8.1 using it. From what I understand, the 100MB EFI partition is normally the first one. On restoration, the following was created

305 MB Win 8.1 system partition
100 MB EFI
C drive
Manufacturer recovery partition

When it upgraded to Win 10, it ended up with the following partition structure

305 MB Win 8.1 system partition
100 MB EFI
C drive
450 MB system partition (I believe this is Win 10 system partition)
Manufacturer recovery partition

Questions:

The trouble is, now when I create a Windows 10 recovery USB drive, it really creates just a rescue drive (< 1GB in size) even though the 'copy system files' option is selected. I believe a recovery USB drive needs at least a 16GB drive. Not sure what is happening here?!!!

Also, is there a way to make Win 8.1 recovery create the system partition adjacent to the C drive so it can resize it to 450 MB during the upgrade? Or maybe create a 500MB partition beforehand that Win 8.1 uses during recovery and later is upgraded to Win 10? Can I create the partitions beforehand using GParted Live USB and expect the Windows recovery process to use them?

Yes, 305MB is a small amount. Would be nice if the entire drive was used in a neat structure instead of leaving unused partitions.

:)

 

Windows 10: probem in creating recovery drive

Original Title: Mr V.c.Dalal

Win 10 64 bit create recovery with usb disk greys out next before recovery disk is fully completed. Cannot complete recoery disk

16 GB USB fully formatted to FAT 32

 

Dual boot problem

Hi all.

I have an older PC that used to run XP. I upgraded it to Win 7 and have now upgraded to Win 10. I now want to make it a dual boot Win 10 system, using the second drive as a disaster recovery backup.

When I set up the dual boot Win XP / Win 7, the system put system boot files on the XP disk. Now I can't boot into Win 10 with that disk off line, nor can I format the XP disk to install Win 10 as it has running system files on it.

I have created a recovery USB flash drive but even after setting the boot devices in BIOS to boot from USB, it will not boot from the recovery disk. My next step is to create a recovery CD to see if that will work.

Any suggestions?

Regards,

Steve

 

Firstly, the first partition is no longer needed, nor is the last oem 8.1recovery partition (as you have created an 8.1 usb recovery drive).

Creating a usb recovery drive is a good idea but sometimes problematic on tablets.

For a normal pc, I would advise a clean install, but on a tablet this can be problematic as tablets often use special drivers not the standard MS iso. Fortunately, you upgraded, so you will have the drivers you need.

This is where a recovery usb is good of course.

Now you have upgraded, I strongly recommend you export your 3rd party drivers using link below (works for windows 10 as well). Then if you ever have to clean install, using MS standard iso, you can sort out the 'missing drivers'.

http://woshub.com/how-to-export-driv...indows-8-1-u1/

As you are having issues creating a recovery drive, then I very strongly recommend (do this anyway) you install Macrium Reflect Free and create an image backup to a 32+GB external usb flash drive, or SD card. It only takes about 10-15 mins typically.

You will need to create a usb recovery drive, but there is a neat option to create a dual boot to Macrium option which is very handy on a tablet, where booting from a usb drive is often more complicated than on a normal pc.

Recovering this way is very quick (10-15 mins), and you do not need to reinstall or mess around with activation).

 

Thanks for the inputs. I used the woshub link to backup the 3rd party drivers for use in the event of a clean install.

The device is a laptop actually, not a tablet. (ASUS TP300LA). I am not keen on options that use up disk space for recovery as I use Windows only very occasionally. Want to keep it in a usable / recoverable state for the rare occasion there is some Windows only software I am looking to try out. I am looking to use the entire freed up space to install Linux.

If I delete the 305MB Win 8.1 partition, is it possible to shift partitions forward without breaking Win 10? i.e. the start of the 100MB EFI partition to where the 305MB partition started and expand the C drive to the left by 305MB? Does Windows need to be told that the partitions have moved, or can it identify them by labels of some sort anyway?

When I booted up with GParted, it showed another partition - a 128MB Microsoft reserved partition. It doesn't show up on Windows Disk Management. Will Win 10 break if this partition is moved?

 

The only two partitions Windows 10 needs to function is the EFI system partition and the OS partition. You can move those around as long as they stay on the same physical disk and don't have to change anything in Windows or the boot files in the EFI system partition.

 

Post an image of your partitions, so we can advise appropriately.

 

Here we go. I had a spare drive, so I stuck that in and installed Win 8.1 from the recovery USB. Here's the partition layout.




Fig 1. Win8.1 partition layout

Then upgraded it to Win 10.




Fig 2. Win 10 partition layout

Read by GParted

GParted reported that the microsoft reserved partition doesn't have an entry in the partition table. Possibly why the partition is hidden away from the Disk Management interface.

It's obvious that the Recovery Image partition can be removed straight away. Ideally, it would be nice to get rid of /dev/sda1 if that was Win 8.1 only. Reduce /dev/sda4 to < 100 GB. Shift /dev/sda5 adjacent to it. That would bring the entire Win installation to about initial 100GB. Leaving the rest for a Linux installation.

Is this achievable? Need some insights from the Windows experts.

Thanks for responding, folks.