Create a USB Recovery Drive in Windows 8.1

How to Create a USB Recovery Drive in Windows 8.1

Oct. 29, 2014 10:32 am / Posted by Michael Eric to Windows Tips
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What is a USB recovery drive for? Once you have a recovery drive created on a flash drive, you'll be able to boot from it in the event that Windows 8.1 no longer start properly for some reasons, in which case these diagnostic tools will come in handy.

This tool was introduced in Windows 8 and enhanced in Windows 8.1. An unbootable corrupted Windows 8 or 8.1 cannot be repaired without a recovery drive, containing useful troubleshooting tools. With the startup problems, this drive becomes an essential.

So let's see how to create a USB recovery drive in Windows 8.1 and 8. Before that, you should know creating a recovery drive will erase anything already stored on your USB flash drive. Use an empty USB flash drive or make sure to transfer any important data from your USB drive to another storage device before using it to create a USB recovery drive.

How to Create Recovery USB Flash Drive in Windows 8.1 and 8?

• 1. Type "recovery drive" in the Start search box and hit Enter.
  
  
  
  For Windows 8, filter by Settings and click or tap the "Create a recovery drive" search result.
  
  
• 2. If a UAC (User Account Control) prompt is shown, asking whether you allow the program to make changes to your computer. Click or tap Yes.
• 3. Click or tap Next.
  
  Note: If you have a store bought OEM computer that came with Windows 8 preinstalled, then you could also check the Copy contents from the recovery partition to the recovery drive box to be able to use the recovery USB flash drive to do a factory restore/recovery of Windows 8.
  
  
• 4. Select a USB flash drive at least 256MB in size that you would like to make a bootable recovery drive with, and click or tap Next.
  
  
• 5. Click or tap on Create. Note that this is your last chance to backup anything on the USB flash drive that you do not want to lose before doing this.
  
  
• 6. When it's finished, click or tap Finish.
  
  

Seeing from all the steps above, you can successfully create a recovery USB flash drive on Windows 8.1 and 8. And if you still have some Windows 8.1 and 8 tips need to know, click here to know more info about Windows tips.

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