Its always better to be safe than sorry. Even when it comes to your Windows 8 PC. If you ever run into problems with the PC, either during installation or during the course of using it, you must have a backup recovery solution to save you heartbreak and frustration later on. A recovery drive is the perfect solution for such situations, and Windows 8 and Windows RT devices include built-in tools that help you create a recovery drive. In fact, your PC may already come with a recovery image, which is probably stored on a dedicated partition. If you are in dire need of that extra space that drive takes up and decide to delete that recovery image from your PC, you’d better have a USB recovery drive in hand to refresh or reset your PC in any future situation. In this tutorial I’ll show you how to create USB recovery drive.
Points to Note:
- Before you go ahead with the process keep these points in mind.
- Ensure that the USB Drive is at least capable of holding up to 4GB.
- Make sure your USB drive is empty. If you have any data on the USB drive, move it to another storage device. When you create a recovery drive you will lose all data stored on the USB Drive.
- A Recovery Drive for a 64-bit Windows 8 version can only be used to repair or refresh a 64-bit system. You cannot use it to fix a 32-bit version of Windows 8. Similarly, a 32-bit Recovery Drive can only be used to fix a 32-bit version of Windows 8.
How to Create a USB Recovery Drive
1. Bring up the Start screen and type Recovery. Or you can just bring up the Search charm and type recovery in the search box.
2. Then below the Search box select Settings.
3. In the right pane, click Create a recovery drive.
4. In the User Account Control Window, click Yes.
5. The Recovery Drive window opens up with the Copy the recovery partition from the PC to the recovery drive checkbox selected. Click Next.
6. In the next screen, select the USB Drive. If you haven’t connected the USB drive to your PC, you can do it now and then make the selection. Click Next.
7. In the next screen, you will see a warning message that tells you that the contents of the USB Drive, if any, will be deleted. Click Create.
8. Windows 8 will start copying the recovery image and necessary recovery tools on to the USB flash drive. This is by no means a quick process and may even take up to an hour depending on your PC and the size of the recovery image.
When the process is complete, the Recovery Drive will open and display its contents.
9. Click Finish to complete the process. You may also be prompted to delete the recovery file that is on your PC hard drive to free up some space. You can avoid doing this unless you really need that extra hard drive space.
10. If you still need that extra space click Delete the recovery partition. Then click Delete.
11. When the removal is complete click Finish.
12. Remove your USB flash drive.
You have just successfully created a Windows 8 USB Recovery drive. Remember to keep the USB in a safe location. This is probably the only copy of Windows 8 recovery image you have and losing it would be your worst nightmare. Also make sure that you don’t use that USB to store other files or data.
Leave a Reply