You may encounter the “Win10 recovery drive cannot be created” error when you try to create a recovery drive in case something goes wrong and you can't boot Windows 10. This post introduces 7 useful solutions to help you out with ease.
If you are running on a Windows 10 computer, you may want to create a recovery drive on a USB drive to help you restore the failed or crashed Windows system when something goes wrong and you can't access your system.
However, users report that they encounter Win10 recovery drive cannot be created occasionally. An error message always pops out saying "We can't create a recovery drive on this PC' with the detailed feature such as:
☊ Some required files are missing. ☊ A problem occurred while creating the Recovery drive. ☊ Create Recovery drive stuck. ☊ Recovery drive not working. ☊ Recovery drive a problem occurred.
If you cannot create a recovery drive Windows 10, it could be caused by one or more of the following known reasons:
* Your USB drive is not formatted or smaller than 16GB
* There are viruses and malware blocking you from creating a recovery drive.
* Your USB flash drive is corrupted or the Windows file system has corrupted.
* The recovery partition information gets lost.
* The winre.wim file which is for holding Windows recovery files is missing.
* Your current computer doesn't support a recovery environment, especially when you upgrade to Windows 10 from an older version.
If you are experiencing the recovery drive cannot be created Windows 10 issue, the below is how to troubleshoot it and use other ways to create the recovery drive successfully.
In the beginning, you can try the following 5 recommended ways to see whether these solutions help with resolving the issue. If one of them works, you can continue the creation of a recovery drive in the traditional way.
Let's have a look at the detailed process of the above listed fixes.
When Windows formats the USB drive, it may not check your drive for bad sectors, resulting in "Win10 recovery drive cannot be created" error. To full format the USB, you can perform the following steps:
Step 1. Connect the USB to your computer.
Step 2. Press "Win + E" to open File Explorer and locate your USB drive.
Step 3. Right-click the USB drive and choose "Format".
Step 4. Under "File System", select NTFS option.
Step 5. Tick "Quick Format" and click "Start".
If it does not work, replace the old USB drive with a new bigger one. Basically, creating a recovery drive in Windows 10 requires a USB drive with at least 16GB in capacity.
If you notice the creation process becomes stuck, scan your computer for viruses, which can be realized by Windows built-in Microsoft Defender.
Step 1. Press "Windows + I" together to open the Settings window and click "Update & Security". Select "Windows Security" on the left panel and choose "Open Windows Security".
Step 2. In the Windows Security window, go to "Virus & threat protection" > "Scan options".
Step 3. You can choose different scan methods based on your needs. Here we recommend you select "Microsoft Defender Offline scan" and then click "Scan now". If found, take recommended actions to clean your system.
Then, restart to create a recovery drive and see if it completes without the "cannot create a recovery drive windows 10" error.
Corrupted system files can sometimes stop you from accessing the USB flash drive, you can use the built-in System File Checker (SFC) to check any file corruption and repair them.
Step 1. Type "cmd" in the search bar and run Command Prompt as administrator.
Step 2. In the Command Prompt, type the command sfc /scannow and then press "Enter".
If nothing is repaired after running the command, you can try using DISM tool as shown in the next part.
DISM tool is short for Deployment Image Servicing and Management. You can run this tool to fix "Win10 recovery drive cannot be created" error.
Step 1. Run Command Prompt as administrator.
Step 2. Type dism.exe /online /cleanup-image /scanhealth and then press "Enter". Wait for the operation to complete.
Step 3. After you see the "The operation completed successfully" message, type dism.exe /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth and press "Enter".
If you have recently upgrade to Windows 10 from the older Windows versions, there should be Windows.old files left on your PC. With Windows.old files, you can roll back to your previous Windows system if necessary.
However, Windows.old directory may block you from creating a recovery drive in Windows 10 computer. Thus, if all the mentioned methods are not working, it's time to delete Windows.old files without hesitation.
Read here, if your "Win10 recovery drive cannot be created" error has been solved, congratulations! If not, don't worry, keep reading to find another two workarounds to create a recovery drive.
Creating a recovery drive within Windows is not the only way to restore your Windows system if something goes wrong. Sometimes a third-party tool can help a lot. That is where AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional steps in. It helps with many tricky disk problems like recovering lost partitions, SSD not showing up, cloned SSD won't boot, EFI partition is missing, etc.
For repairing OS boot failure, AOMEI software provides you with different ways to replace a common Windows recovery drive: you can clone the current Windows operating system to another drive as a backup and restore the computer anytime or make a bootable media to access your system when your OS cannot boot up.
AOMEI software will guarantee the migration process smooth and cloned OS bootable. With the "hot clone" feature, the cloning process won’t require rebooting the system annoyingly. When the system crashes, you can use the cloned OS to recover your PC to the previous state.
Step 1. Connect the new SSD or HDD to your current computer. Install and launch AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional. Click “Clone” in the top toolbar, and choose “Migrate OS”.
Step 2. Choose an unallocated space on your target disk as the target location. If there is no unallocated space, you can check “I want to delete all partitions on the disk 2 to migrate system to the disk” and then click "Next".
Step 3. In this window, you could resize partition and modify other information (including location, and drive letter) of the partition being created or just keep the default settings.
Step 4. A note about how to boot OS from SSD or HDD will show up, keep it in mind and click "Finish" to continue.
Step 5. You'll be back to the main interface, click "Apply" > "Proceed" to begin migrating.
Note: If the whole hard drive is important to you, you can choose "Disk Clone" to clone all data from one drive to another.
Another way to avoid "Win10 recovery drive cannot be created" problem is to make a bootable disk. After creation, when you can’t boot into your Windows, you can use this disk to access your system and repair some issues.
Step 1. Connect the USB drive to your computer, and run AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional. Click “Tools” in the top toolbar, and choose “Make Bootable Media”.
Step 2. Choose the right USB drive under "USB Boot Device" and click "Proceed".
Step 3. Then you will be told the USB will be formatted, please back up important data. If you have done that, click "Yes".
Step 4. Then wait for the process to be completed.
The next time you suffer a system failure, you can boot from the bootable media, and you will get into the interface of AOMEI Partition Assistant automatically. Then, you can use it to do repairing, such as formatting partition, checking partition, rebuilding corrupted MBR, converting MBR to GPT, and more.
From this passage, you have known why Win10 recovery drive cannot be created and learned five free and easy solutions to fix the issue. Hope at least one of them works. If you still can't solve this error, ask AOMEI Partition Assistant, the best disk manager, for help.
It's efficient and effective to restore your system from OS backup or access your Windows from a bootable emergency disk anytime when your system crashes. If you receive the "we can't create a recovery drive on this PC" error on Windows Server computer, you can switch to AOMEI Partition Assistant Server edition.