Can’t create USB recovery

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I have the latest build of Windows 10 professional. I can’t create a USB recovery to a 16 GB USB flash drive. When I try, the thermometer bar runs for more than 10 minutes then comes up with with my two external hard drives that are attached by USB, but not the flash drive that is pushed into the socket and recognized. How can I get it to go on the thumb drive? The two choices I am given are my external hard drive backups, but I don’t want it to go there. It will erase all my backups. I hope someone will help me.

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Did you do the following?
From the taskbar, search for Create a recovery drive and then select it.
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 > Create.

Make sure that your PC can actually boot from a USB drive. Older ones cant.

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I have done the steps you listed, but it doesn’t give me the choice of a USB thumb drive. It does give me the choice of my 2 external backup drives – one is a Hitachi, the other is Seagate. I have tried several USB sticks – one an 8 GB Sandisk Cruiser Glide, a 16 GB Sandisk Cruiser, and a Verbatim 8 GB. My computer can read all of these USB sticks and can write to them, but not create a recovery drive. I have made recovery discs and I can boot from them.

Shall I give up and be satisfied with the discs?

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Remove your external hard drives as they could be taking priority.

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Even when I removed the external drives, the computer didn’t see the USB drives. I can write to and read from USB drives with no problem, but I can’t make a rescue drive. I’m giving up, but it is a mystery and I wish I knew the answer.

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Even when I removed the external drives, the computer didn’t see the USB drives. I can write to and read from USB drives with no problem, but I can’t make a rescue drive. I’m giving up, but it is a mystery and I wish I knew the answer.

Is your USB drive formatted? (I’m not even sure if it matters)

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I don’t have a spare 16GB stick to attempt to replicate creating an USB recovery drive, but is it still pointing to the external disks even though they aren’t connected ?

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I followed the Microsoft instructions here, and they worked jsut fine on a 16 GB USB3 thumb drive. It detected the thumb drive in seconds (seemed instant). I didn’t have any other external drives plugged in at the time. I have all the Win 10 updates installed. My Windows 10 Pro is the 64 bit version.

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Aren’t those the steps you followed before ?

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Aren’t those the steps you followed before ?

Did you assume dweebken’s post was from the original poster, Tom?

Image or Clone often! Backup, backup, backup, backup......
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Home Built: Windows 10 Home 64-bit, AMD Athlon II X3 435 CPU, 16GB RAM, ASUSTeK M4A89GTD-PRO/USB3 (AM3) motherboard, 512GB SanDisk SSD, 3 TB WD HDD, 1024MB ATI AMD RADEON HD 6450 video, ASUS VE278 (1920x1080) display, ATAPI iHAS224 Optical Drive, integrated Realtek HD Audio

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Did you assume dweebken’s post was from the original poster, Tom?

Yes I did – my bad.

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I haven’t bothered creating a recovery drive.

I’ve created a System Repair Disk and make regular system images alternatively onto external HDDs as well as setting my laptops to boot from the DVD drive before the HDD.

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