How to Create a Microsoft Surface Recovery Disk and Drive Image

Microsoft Surface tablets have a partition on their drives that are dedicated to recovery information. This makes it easy to reset your device to factory settings just by using the partition, but it also has its drawbacks. For instance, if something goes wrong and you can’t access your Surface drive, a partition with a recovery feature does you no good. The partition also takes up a lot of space. In other words, there are numerous advantages to creating a recovery disk from which you can do a system reset on your Surface. Use the steps below to do so.
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Step 1: Connect a USB drive to your tablet that is large enough to store your entire recovery partition. Swipe in from the right edge of the screen, select “Search,” and then type “Recovery” into the search bar. A “Recovery” option should come up.

Step 2: Tap “Recovery,” then select “create a recovery drive.” You’ll be greeted with a “User Account Control” box, where you will have to tap “Yes” to proceed with the disk creation.

Step 3: Look for an option to “Copy the recovery partition from the PC to the recovery drive.” Tap this button, click “Next,” and then select your chosen USB drive to tell your Surface where to store the recovery information. Tap “Next” to approve the drive, then click “Create” to move the recovery information onto the drive.

Recap

Once you’ve moved your recovery information onto an external USB drive, you will have more options available to you if you ever need to reset your Microsoft Surface to factory settings. You will also be able to delete the recovery partition from your Surface to free up space. You should see an option to do this once your new recovery drive has been created.