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How to Backup System Files to Recovery Drive: The Most User-friendly Solution

Wondershare Recoverit Authors

Jan 24, 2024 • Filed to: Take Data Backup • Proven solutions

“How long to create a recovery drive in Windows 10 and is it possible to backup my system files to recovery drive?”

As a friend of mine asked me this, I realized that a lot of Windows users still don’t know how to create a recovery drive. Ideally, having a recovery drive is extremely important as it can troubleshoot issues on your system and help you restore your data. Thankfully, it is pretty easy to create a recovery drive and include your system files in it. In this post, I will let you know how to create a backup of system files on a recovery drive in detail.

Windows Recovery Drive Banner

What is a Recovery Drive and Why is it Important?

Before we learn how to create a recovery drive, it is important to cover some basics. Ideally, a recovery drive is an external source (like a USB drive) that would contain the Windows booting environment. If you want, you can also include the backup of your data in a recovery drive that can later be restored.

Whenever your system malfunctions or is not able to boot correctly, you can take the assistance of the recovery drive. It will boot a malfunctioning PC via the inserted USB drive and would let you recover the system files, troubleshooting the problem.


How to Create a Recovery Drive on your Windows System?

As you can see, it is pretty important to create a recovery drive that can help you troubleshoot all kinds of issues with your system. To learn how long to create a recovery drive in Windows 10, you can follow this basic drill. Beforehand, just make sure that the USB drive that you are using must have 16 GB of capacity to hold all the essential system files.

Step 1: Launch the Windows Recovery Drive Wizard

At first, you can just connect your USB drive to your computer (with at least 16 GB of available space) and launch the recovery drive wizard. You can find it via Settings > Recovery or just search for “Recovery Drive” from the Start menu.

Launch Windows Recovery Drive Wizard

Step 2: Select the Target Drive

This will simply launch the Windows recovery drive wizard on the screen. From here, you can just enable the option to backup system files in the recovery drive as you would start the process.

Start Creating a Recovery Drive

Subsequently, the interface will display the available drives connected to your system. Here, you can just select the target USB drive that you want to convert as a recovery drive for Windows.

Select USB for Recovery Drive

Step 3: Create a Recovery Drive Successfully

Once you select the USB drive, the interface will prompt you that the existing data on it would be lost. Simply agree to it and wait for a while as it would backup system files to the recovery drive. Since it might take a while (20-45 minutes) for the process to be completed, it is recommended not to close the wizard.

Creating USB Recovery Drive

In the end, Windows will let you know that the recovery file has been created. You can now disconnect the USB drive and use it whenever you want to repair your system.

Windows Recovery Drive Created


How to Backup System Files to a Recovery Drive?

As you can see from the above tutorial that we are given an option to backup system files to the recovery drive. Though, if you want to include more files and customize the process, then you can use a dedicated application like Wondershare UBackit. It is a user-friendly and resourceful application that can help you backup your data to any destination. Users can try its inbuilt filters to select specific system files (or anything else) to be included in the backup.

To learn how to backup system files to a recovery drive with Wondershare UBackit, you can follow these steps:

Step 1: Locate the System Files on your Computer

If you want to backup system files to the recovery drive, then you need to locate them first. For this, you need to browse the Windows partition (which is C in most cases). Here, you can go to Windows > System32 folder to view the available system files on your computer.

Windows System Files Location

Step 2: Choose to Create a New Backup on Wondershare UBackit

Once the system files are located, you can install and launch Wondershare UBackit on your computer. Go to the Backup and Restore option from its home and choose to create a new backup.

Wondershare UBackit

Step 3: Select the Files and Folders to Backup

To proceed, Wondershare UBackit will let you select the data to be included in the backup. For instance, to backup system files in the recovery drive, you can just browse to the Windows folder (System32) and select the folders/files to backup.

locate the backup source

If you want, you can also enter relevant keywords on the search bar of UBackit to directly look for specific files.

search function

Besides that, the application also offers different filters that you can access from the top to look for any specific type of data.

filter function

Step 4: Select the Location to Save the Backup

After that, you can simply select the drive or the partition where the backup would be saved. If you want to create a recovery drive, then you can select the connected USB drive where the system files would be saved.

choose backup destination

Additionally, you can also enable the automatic backup option from the top to set up an automatic schedule (like daily, weekly, or monthly) to save your data.

set automatic backup

Step 5: Complete the backup process

You can simply click on the “Backup” button and wait for a while as UBackit would backup system files to the recovery drive. Following the same approach, you can back up anything else to the desired location.

backup precess

It is recommended to wait for a while and let UBackit complete the backup process. In the end, you will be notified and can easily restore your data anywhere you like.

backup completes

As you can see, it is pretty easy to create a recovery drive on Windows and it should always be kept in handy. Apart from that, I have also provided a seamless solution to backup system files to a recovery drive. With the help of a resourceful tool like Wondershare UBackit, you can back up almost anything to a selected location and can later restore it to avoid unwanted data loss.

Recoverit author

Amy Dennis

staff Editor

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