Unsolved
This post is more than 5 years old
5 Posts
0
115963
Unable to create USB recovery media
As others have reported (e.g., en.community.dell.com/.../19668993), I'm having a problem creating Windows 10 recovery media. I'm following exactly the instructions here: http://www.dell.com/support/article/uk/en/ukbsdt1/SLN297924/EN#Refresh, but always receive the error message "We can't create the recovery drive / A problem occurred while creating the drive" a few minutes into the process.
This is on an XPS 8900 Special Edition, pre-installed Windows 10 Home 64-bit. I've tried two different 16 Gb flash drives, both formatted to NTFS.
Is this happening because these drives in fact have less than 16 Gb available (since hardware manufacturers measure storage sizes differently from software, and Windows reports only 14.6 Gb free on the drives)? Would a 32 Gb drive work?
speedstep
9 Legend
9 Legend
•
47K Posts
0
February 1st, 2016 11:00
Try creating using USB2 rather than USB3 ports.
Also keep in mind that SSD's and Flash Drives Retention is 52 weeks or less meaning based on the storage temperature they can lose all their data in less than 1 week in a hot environment aka in your car at 150 degrees.
The Detrapping of data is like a charged battery where the 1's and zero's go away.
Bar_Foo
5 Posts
0
February 1st, 2016 13:00
Thanks for the suggestion. The same thing happens with a USB2 port.
ieee488
4 Operator
4 Operator
•
11.1K Posts
0
February 1st, 2016 16:00
There is always the possibility that the recovery partition is corrupted.
Bar_Foo
5 Posts
2
February 1st, 2016 16:00
That is possible, but it's a brand new computer, and this is a problem many other people have reported, so that seems improbable. Is there any way to test whether the partition is intact?
LSUFAN51
4 Operator
4 Operator
•
6.4K Posts
0
February 1st, 2016 16:00
:emotion-2:
How to resolve USB port issues:
www.dell.com/.../en
Bar_Foo
5 Posts
0
February 1st, 2016 16:00
Thanks, but that's not the problem. I can do everything else normally with these flash drives in these USB ports--format, copy files, etc.--and I'm not having any issues with any other USB peripherals. (And I've run the Dell diagnostics and it reported no hardware problems.) The problem is only with the creation of a USB recovery drive.
ieee488
4 Operator
4 Operator
•
11.1K Posts
0
February 1st, 2016 17:00
You can try creating and booting into WinPE 10. https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/dn938389%28v=vs.85%29.aspx
Bar_Foo
5 Posts
0
February 2nd, 2016 20:00
I'm not sure what booting into WinPE would gain. I want to have a recovery drive in case I need to reinstall because of a hardware failure. As I understand it, the USB recovery drive can have all the installation information including the license code, which a generic Windows ISO does not have. So it's the "correct", if not the only, way to reinstall the OS if the hardware fails or the OS is so messed up that it won't even boot to the on-disk recovery partition. But I can't find a way to make one--now I've tried a 32 Gb USB flash drive as well, and still no luck.
ieee488
4 Operator
4 Operator
•
11.1K Posts
0
February 3rd, 2016 07:00
Just contact Dell if under warranty.
I am at this point totally confused.
momist03
9 Posts
0
October 5th, 2018 03:00
I'm in the same position here, with a brand new XPS 15 9570. The creation of a recovery drive fails, even on a new 32GB USB stick. It writes 23.1GB to that - and never finishes! Did you find a solution please? Dell premium support are useless and have not helped me.