Answered Are Windows 10 recovery drives re-usable?

techno79

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I have 5 Windows 10 computers in my house and I haven't created a backup USB recovery drive for any of them. I was planning to do this soon in case I run into issues but I have a few questions:

1) Do I need to create a recovery drive from each of my computers or can I create just one drive which can be used on any computer?
2) How can I use my recovery drive to re-install from scratch (e.g. if I purchased a new HDD)?
3) How or where to I backup my Windows license along with the recovery drive? Do I even need to do that or does it get encoded in the recovery drive?

TIA
 
1) Recovery drives include the standard drivers and any drives and software that are specific to the machine it was made on. So if you used it on another machine you'd lose any model-specific functionality until you re-downloaded the appropriate drivers/software. On unusual machines it may not even function, but I'd expect it to work on standard computers.

2) For a new hard drive you'd have to tick the option to include system files, which makes it function like a standard install disc. For fixing an existing install I think a recovery drive without that can trigger Windows's Reset function.

3) It's recorded in the BIOS so windows and hard drive failures won't affect it. I believe there's also an option to tie it to a Microsoft account in case of motherboard failure, although I don't know if there's an offline way to back it up.


It's also worth pointing out that Microsoft makes the latest version of the standard install disc for Windows 10 available online:
Download Windows 10
 
You don't need to make a separate recovery drive for each computer just make a windows 10 USB installer from windows media creation tool as EndlessWaves says here
Download Windows 10
These will install windows from scratch

The activation details are stored on Microsoft servers for each PC so you don't need to worry about those, when the newly restored PC has an internet connection Microsoft will automatically activate it.

The only think that you may wish to do is to backup your data, and any program licence keys for each PC.
The alternative involves backing up each computer with imaging software such as Acronis to an external drive or Network storage which may be overkill for the average user. The advantage of this is that the reimaged drive is identical to the original so all your programs settings etc are restored in the event of hard drive failure
 

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