How to Create a Recovery Drive on Windows 10

Take advantage of the opportunity to create a recovery drive so you have a way to perform repairs if something ever goes wrong. The one immutable law of PCs is that stuff happens. And when it does, there's usually a way to recover, if you had the foresight to create a recovery drive first.

Booting from a USB recovery drive allows you to perform basic troubleshooting repairs on any Windows system. If you select the option to copy system files to the recovery drive, you can boot from that drive and reinstall Windows on the target system.

Creating a basic recovery drive requires a USB drive or Empty CD that is at least 512 MB in size. For a recovery drive that includes Windows system files, you'll need a larger USB drive; for a 64-bit copy of Windows 10, the drive should be at least 16 GB in size. The recovery drive tool formats the drive, so be sure to make backup copies of any important files on that drive before you begin the process.

You'll find the Recovery Media Creator tool in the old-style Control Panel, under the Recovery heading. The easiest way to get there is to type Create a recovery drive in the search box on the taskbar, then click the shortcut from the search results.

If you want your recovery drive to include files for reinstalling Windows 10, be sure to select the Back up system files to the recovery drive option on the first page. When done keep it in a safe place for future use.