The benefit of creating repair boot USB drive

Here creating Windows 10 repair boot USB drive means to create a bootable recovery drive using USB drive. If you have already made such a drive before system crashes, you’ll be able to fix issues, reset your computer when your computer is unable to boot. The bootable recovery drive also offers you an opportunity to reinstall Windows 10 if you are unable to repair your system.  

When you are without USB drive but with CD/DVD, you can create Windows 10 system repair disc using CD/DVD, which can also help you to fix issues when you can’t boot your computer.

How to create Windows 10 bootable recovery disk?

All in all, it is a wise choice to create Windows 10 repair USB drive in case of Windows 10 running into problems. Here are the detailed steps:

Step 1. Connect a USB drive to your working computer and make sure it can be detected.

PS: If you have any data that you don’t want to lose, backup files at first as this operation will delete all data on the USB drive.

Step 2. In the search box, type “recovery drive” and choose “Create a recovery drive”.

Step 3. In the small pop-up window, check the option “Back up system files to the recovery drive” and click “Next”.

Step 4. Select a USB flash drive and click “Next’.

Step 5. Click “Create” to start the operation.

How to repair Windows 10 using repair boot USB drive?

If you need to repair system using bootable recovery drive when your operating system fails to boot, you can insert the repair USB drive to your computer and enter BIOS to make your computer boot from the bootable disk firstly. Then, when the recovery screen appears, go to “Advanced options” > “Troubleshoot” > “Startup Repair”.

If Startup Repair can’t solve the problem, you can go to “Command Prompt” under “Advanced options” to repair Windows 10. In the command prompt window, if you need to repair damaged system files, type “sfc /scannow /offbootdir=d:\ /offwindir=d:\windows” and hit “Enter” key. If you need to rebuild BCD settings, you can run the following commands:

  • bootrec /fixmbr
  • bootrec /fixboot
  • bootrec /rebuildbcd

Windows 10 repair boot USB drive, is that enough?

As described above, the bootable Windows 10 repair drive helps fix boot issues. It even can help you to restore or reinstall the Windows system. But the system recovery disk may fail to boot other computers except the one that created it. In some cases, you even can’t create a recovery USB disk for Windows 10.

In such a case, you could consider using free backup software to do so. 3rd party software like AOMEI Backupper Standard is recommended.

◉ It can create bootable media to boot different versions of Windows, including Windows 10/8.1/8/7/Vista/XP.
◉ It allows you to backup the system with different schedules, including Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Event Triggers (paid) and USB plug in (paid).
◉ Apart from creating a system image, you are able to create image backups for a whole disk, a specific partition, or selected files/folders.

When your system is not bootable, you can boot your computer from the bootable USB drive and restore system if you have a system image file created by AOMEI Backupper at hand.

How to create a bootable USB drive for Windows 10/8/7?

Before creating bootable media:

  • Insert a USB drive to a working computer running Windows and ensure that it can be detected.
  • If you don’t want to lose data on the USB drive, you can make a backup before operation.
  • Download AOMEI Backupper Standard, install and launch it.

Step 1. In the main interface, click “Create Bootable Media” under “Tools” tab.

Step 2. Select the type of bootable media that you are creating. WinPE is recommended.

Note: Linux based bootable media enable you to access basic functions of AOMEI Backupper and Windows PE based bootable media allow you to access all functions of it.

Step 3. Select a bootable media among three options (Here USB Boot Device is chosen) and click “Next” to execute the operation.

When the process completes, click on “Finish” button.

After creating bootable USB drive, it is time to know how to boot from USB drive: Insert the bootable USB drive to the computer that needs to restore system > Press certain key while starting computer to enter BIOS to boot computer from the USB drive > Access the main interface of AOMEI Backupper to restore system.