How to Copy Recovery Partition to USB in Windows 11, 10, 8, 7

About the Recovery Partition on your PC

Recovery Partition, also known as factory restore partition, is a part of disk drive that set aside by the manufacturer to keep an image of the system. Many laptops come with a recovery partition allowing you set the computer back to original state using specialized utilities, such as Acer eRecovery Management, ASUS Recovery Partition, Dell Factory Image Restore, Gateway Recovery Management, HP PC System Recovery, or Sony VAIO Recovery Wizard.

It is not hard to find this recovery utility because it usually consists of brand name and the recovery character. Normally, pressing Ctrl+F11 at boot time will initiate the recovery procedure.

• Why clone Recovery Partition to USB drive?
• How to copy Recovery Partition to USB in Windows 7/8/10?
• How to copy Recovery Partition to USB using CMD?

Why clone Recovery Partition to USB drive?

I’d like to clone HP Recovery Partition to USB drive and upgrade this slow HDD to fast SSD. So how can I move the recovery partition from the HDD to the USB drive I’m using?

This is one of the scenarios where people want to copy recovery partitions. In this case, you can place the partition on USB drive, replace the HDD with new disk, insert the USB and bootable device, then boot the PC and perform recovery from USB flash drive, which is almost the same as clean install.

If fact, this is not the only application of copying recovery partition, you may consider doing it for these reasons:

◉ Free up space on your current hard drive. A Recovery Partition holds only image of original PC state, so it usually varies from MBs to GBs. But for disks with small capacity, several GBs space is also valuable. Cloning Recovery Partition to flash drive and then deleting it will generate an unallocated space, you can then extend other partitions, or move unallocated space to C drive to enlarge system space.

◉ Creating bootable USB from recovery partition can help you perform system restore when system crashes or you want to replace the hard drive, just like in the case above.

◉ Cloning the partition could be counted as a backup of the recovery drive. For instance, copying Acer Recovery Partition to USB drive and putting it aside, thus you will always have a disaster recovery solution even if the computer hard drive fails and the built-in recovery partition won't work.

Note:

If you have the habit of backing up system and data regularly, then you can delete the Recovery Partition on the hard drive because you already have a disaster recovery strategy in place.

But if you do not back up often, then the Recovery Partition may be a last resort in case your computer fails, and it's also a good idea to copy it to other devices.

How to copy Recovery Partition to USB in all the Windows systems

To clone recovery partition to USB, you can make it with Windows built-in tool or via third-party cloning tool named AOMEI Backupper Professional. But it’s not that easy to copy recovery partition to USB with the built-in tool. If you prefer an easy and quick way to copy Dell, HP, ASUS or Lenovo recovery partition to USB or to another hard drive, AOMEI Backupper is recommended.

Copy Recovery Partition to USB with Windows built-in tool

Step 1. Click Start menu to access search box.

Step 2. Type recovery drive in the search box and select Create a recovery drive.

Step 3. When the recovery drive tool opens, select Copy the recovery partition from the PC to the recovery drive and then select Next.

Step 4. Plug in your USB flash drive/external hard drive and select it and choose Next.

Step 5. Choose Create and then it will start to copy recovery partition.

Copy Recovery Partition to USB with AOMEI Backupper

Some users cannot clone recovery partition to USB drive with Windows built-in tool because the partition contains system programs. Chances are that you will get “the drive is not a valid backup location” warning.

Luckily, AOMEI Backupper Professional will solve this problem for you. With Disk Clone feature, you can clone ASUS, Dell, HP, ASUS, Lenovo...recovery partition or even copy hidden Recovery Partition to USB drive, another hard drive or SSD. Also, it supports cloning between NTFS and FAT32 file systems.

The operation is very simple in a user-friendly interface. You can download it (Windows 11/10/8/7/Vista/XP supported) and follow these steps to copy Recovery Partition along with the disk. Clone features in trial can only be demonstrated. Please upgrade for full functionality.

Step 1. Install and start AOMEI Backupper. Plug in the USB drive and make sure it can be detected by Windows. Click Disk Clone under Clone tab.

✨ Both MBR and GPT are two different disk types for data storage. If you don't know clearly, please check its disk properties in Disk Management with the following steps.

• Press Win + R to open the Run window. Then, type diskmgmt.msc and hit OK to open disk management.
• Then, right-click the disk you want to clone and select Properties in the pop-up window.
• In the Properties window, select the Volume tab and confirm the partition style. It can be MBR (Master Boot Record) or GPT (GUID Partition Table).

Step 2. Select the source disk containing the Recovery Partition.

Step 3. Select the USB drive as the destination disk. Please note that all data on this USB drive will be overwritten, so backup files you care most beforehand.

Step 4. Tick Sector By Sector Clone to copy all the sectors and create an intact copy of the disk. This ensures the cloned Recovery Partition can work normally. Then click Start Clone to execute the operation.

Tips:

• When cloning Recovery Partition to SSD, you can check SSD Alignment to improve the reading and writing speed.

• The Professional Edition supports cloning system disk from MBR to MBR, GPT system disk to MBR, migrate MBR system disk to GPT, or move GPT system disk to GPT.

• The Professional edition also supports you to resize partitions or modify drive letters on the destination disk via the Edit Partitions feature.

How to copy Recovery Partition to USB using CMD?

AOMEI Backupper Professional also provides a way to clone hard drive in Command Prompt. Follow these steps to clone recovery partition in CMD if you prefer this way.

1. Open an elevated Command Prompt. Type the installation path of AOMEI Backupper Professional at the prompt and press Enter. For example, cd C:\Program Files\AOMEI Backupper.

2. Input this command: AMBackup /c /t Part /s E /d D and press Enter. The command means cloning E drive to D drive. The cloning process will start immediately.

Description: "/c" means Clone; "/t Part" means the type of clone is partition clone; "/s E" means the source partition is E drive; "/d D" means the destination partition is D drive.

Summary

It won’t be long before the process to be completed. You can create a bootable media (USB or CD/DVD) using this software in case the system refuses to boot. AOMEI Backupper also allows you to clone bootable USB drive to hard drive in Windows as well as clone hard drive with bad sectors. It is still reliable backup solution that brings system backup, disk backup, partition backup, and file backup features for you.