Prepare A Usb Stick To Make A Usb Recovery Drive In Windows 10

I had seen a previous instruction on this that was confusing.

If I set up a USB stick to make a Recovery drive there's some odd questions.

The first question is how many Gb does the stick
have to be? I think the one I have is 32 mb but it is very inexpensive.

Next there the question I encountered on formatting the USB.

It said (not from Microsoft ) that the Win10 will format it as Fat32 but that the USB must be formatted to NTFS (like putting through Admin Tools in Win 10) to make the Recovery drive.

So which is it?

Third thing is this ASUS A320M-K board I have says UEFI BIOS.

But currently I'm running a SATA HDD made on another PC in MBR which is an MSI motherboard setup. It runs ok.

A lot of questions on this simple task.

Is there a Major Geeks guide with everything on it for this?

 

Check again. I suspect the stick is 32 GB. A 32MB stick would be very, very old. I gave all of those small ones away years ago and the smallest we now have is 256MB.
It should be 16GB or larger.

Don't worry about formatting. The recovery process will do what needs to be done.
To create a recovery drive in Windows 10:
In the search box next to the Start button, type Create a recovery drive and then select it. You might be asked to enter an admin password or confirm your choice.
When the tool opens, make sure Back up system files to the recovery drive is selected and then select Next.
Connect a USB drive to your PC, select it, and then select Next. (Once selected, any files on the USB will be deleted and the wizard will write to the stick).
Select Create. Many files need to be copied to the recovery drive, so this might take a while.

Be aware that this is NOT an image. It doesn't contain any personal files, programs and settings.

You should learn how to create an image. (I make images of our 4 Windows 7 computers every 2 months. If something goes wrong, it is easier to restore an image than to waste hours trying to figure out what went wrong and searching for ways to fix it.)

Sorry, I can't answer any questions on UEFI...I don't have any system that uses it. I also don't run Windows 10. Windows 7 is the highest version of Windows I run.

 

Thanks for answering. Yes you are right. On my own I just stuck the one in I have (it is a 32 Mb I got for $5.00) and the process went ahead.

If one hasn't done this there there are long 'working' periods bars traveling across the screen like the system is looking for somthing it can't find. Then it does and the actual process took a number of hours-- a on a fairly new Ryzen 2400g.

What I'm saying is the program element is poorly marked.

 

The 32MB pen drive loads ok. The first screen I get is worrisome though. It asks which language
I want like a scratch install. Can someone say that this Recue drive is going to preserve what files were on the disk and just concern itself with Windows (like back in the day of XP, that last time
that was possible) or will it wipe what's on there no different from making an intial install?

I was able to cancel the routine but even at this first screen there was no 'quit' button.

 

You can't use a 32 MB stick. It has to be 32 GB or larger.

 

I got a "completed message." I loaded the USB stick but stopped short not knowing if data would be saved on the target SSD. If a larger one is needed, yes I can get another. But iIf it takes all the personal files it's no different from starting over.
The storage device is SSD. That means NTSC file format. bootrec /fixmbr works on this Win10. Continuing with reading about it, elsewhere the recommendation was run Repair disk (mine on CD) then run cmd > bootrec /fixboot and that should get it going from something like a power loss, or device removal that doesn't have hot plug protection.