Windows 10 has more ways than ever to recover and back up your system. It also offers more advanced startup options when your PC won’t boot. There may come a time when you’re unable to boot if something goes awry. So it’s essential to create a recovery drive before disaster strikes.
Creating a recovery drive allows you to boot from the USB drive and access the advanced startup options. Then you can use those tools to troubleshoot issues and even recover your system and reinstall Windows 10.
Create a Windows 10 Recovery Drive
Grab a flash drive that’s at least 16 GB and plug it into your PC.
Next, type: recovery drive into the search field on the taskbar and hit Enter. Or select the option to create from the results at the top or click Open from the app description section.
If you still have User Account Control enabled on your PC click Yes to run it.
That will launch the Recovery Drive wizard that allows you to create a Windows 10 recovery drive. Make sure ‘Back up system files to the recovery drive‘ is checked and click Next.
The Recovery Drive tool will scan your PC for available USB drives. Now select the flash drive that you want to use and click Next.
On the next screen, click Create to start the process of creating your recovery drive; it should just take a few minutes to complete. Keep in mind that this is deleting all of the data on the drive.
Then your recovery drive will start to be created. You’ll see a progress bar while it is created.
That’s it! You will get a message that the recovery drive is ready. Click the Finish button and remove the USB drive. Make sure to keep the drive in a safe place so you can use it in the future if needed.
Advanced Boot Options
If you’re unable to boot into Windows 10 for any reason, you can boot from the recovery drive. You will get a menu of Advanced options to help troubleshoot the problem of your system and it up and running. It includes System Restore, System Image Recovery, Automatic Repair, Command Prompt, UEFI Firmware Settings, and Windows Startup Settings options.
