Revive Your PC in Seconds! Learn How to Create a Custom Windows 10 Dedicated Recovery Partition

If you’re a Windows 10 user, then you know how frustrating it can be when your PC crashes or has any issues. You may have experienced the infamous “Blue Screen of Death” or have encountered other errors that have made your computer unusable. Luckily, Windows has built-in features that can help you fix these issues. One of the most helpful features is the Recovery Partition.

A Recovery Partition is a hidden partition on your hard drive that contains the necessary files to recover your PC if it encounters any issues. When you encounter a problem, you can boot your PC from the Recovery Partition and reset your PC to its default settings. This can help fix any issues you’re having and get your PC back to working order quickly.

The good news is that you can also create a custom Windows 10 Recovery Partition to help fix any issues your PC may encounter. This is helpful if you need to reinstall Windows or if you encounter any other problems that the built-in Recovery Partition can’t fix.

Creating a Recovery Partition is really simple and can be done in just a few steps. Here’s how to do it:

Step 1: Open Disk Management

To create a Recovery Partition, you’ll need to open Disk Management. To do this, right-click the Start button and click “Disk Management.”

Step 2: Shrink your existing partition

Once you have Disk Management open, right-click your existing partition (usually “C:”) and click “Shrink Volume.” This will allow you to create a new partition for the Recovery Partition.

Step 3: Create a new partition

Next, right-click the unallocated space that you just created and click “New Simple Volume.” Follow the prompts to create the new partition.

Step 4: Format the new partition

Once you’ve created the new partition, right-click it and select “Format.” Choose “NTFS” as the file system and give the partition a name like “Recovery.”

Step 5: Set up the Recovery Partition

Finally, you’ll need to set up the Recovery Partition. To do this, open the Control Panel and click “Recovery.” Click “Configure System Restore” and then click “Configure” under “Restore settings.” Choose the new Recovery Partition you just created as the location for system backup files.

That’s it! You’ve now created a custom Recovery Partition. If you encounter any issues with your PC in the future, you can use this partition to reset your PC to its default settings and get it back to working order quickly.

In conclusion, Windows 10’s built-in Recovery Partition is a great feature that can help you fix any issues your PC may encounter. However, creating a custom Recovery Partition is even better because it gives you more control and flexibility. By following these simple steps, you can create a custom Recovery Partition in just a few minutes and have peace of mind knowing that you can quickly fix any issues with your PC.

One of the differences between a computer with a clean installation of Windows and a brand new PC with Windows pre-install is that new computers come with a dedicated recovery partition that includes a recovery image with the operating system, programs, and settings. This recovery partition with the recovery image is extremely useful to repair and reset your Windows installation to the factory defaults configuration, if you ever run into an issue or the system crash and fails on you.

Years ago, when we started to see PC manufacturers including a recovery partition on new systems instead of shipping the recovery discs, we thought it was a thing of saving cost more than being practical, as including a hidden partition with the recovery image takes a chunk of the disk space in the main hard drive.

However, today hard drives come with a lot of space and seeing that most Windows devices do not include a DVD-drive, having a dedicated recovery partition can be very valuable to recover quickly without the need of having to install drivers and programs, and you don’t have to keep track of physical discs.

Up until now, creating a dedicated recovery partition was not an easy task, but now there are tools such as AOMEI OneKey Recovery software that makes the process very simple.

OneKey Recovery is a piece of software that anyone can download for free to create a dedicated recovery partition for your custom installation of Windows. The software is compatible with all major versions of Microsoft’s operating system including Windows 7, Windows 8.1, and Windows 10.

The software is really easy to use and makes the process a child’s play. However, it’s always a good idea to create a full backup of your system in case something goes wrong. Follow the steps below to create your own dedicated recovery partition for Windows 10.

Create a dedicated Windows 10 recovery partition

  • Download and install AOMEI OneKey Recovery in your computer.
  • Launch the application and click the OneKey System Backup tile.
  • Specify that you want the option “Backup system to AOMEI OneKey Recovery Partition” and click Next.
  • Select the drive where to create a new recovery partition and click Next.
  • OneKey Recovery will identify the Windows partition that needs to be backed up and it will automatically calculate the space require to create the recovery partition. Once you check that everything is in order, click Start Backup to continue.
  • The process begins by partitioning the hard drive, creating a Windows Preinstallation Environment (Windows PE), and preparing the system to upload the backup.

The process will take a while depending on the amount of data in your computer, after the backup completes, you’ll be notified with a message on the screen.

Download and install AOMEI OneKey Recovery in your computer.

Launch the application and click the OneKey System Backup tile.

Specify that you want the option “Backup system to AOMEI OneKey Recovery Partition” and click Next.

Select the drive where to create a new recovery partition and click Next.

OneKey Recovery will identify the Windows partition that needs to be backed up and it will automatically calculate the space require to create the recovery partition. Once you check that everything is in order, click Start Backup to continue.

The process begins by partitioning the hard drive, creating a Windows Preinstallation Environment (Windows PE), and preparing the system to upload the backup.

Keep this in mind

By default, OneKey Recovery adds an entry to the Windows boot menu, which can be a little distracting to see. The good news is that the software includes various settings to change this behavior. Launch the utility and go to the settings page (click the gear icon on the top-right corner) and choose the best option suited for you.

The “Enable the boot menu” adds an invisible entry that allows you to simply press “A” to enter into recovery mode when the device is starting up. You can also choose to show the “Press A for AOMEI OneKey Recovery” message. The default is “Enter into AOMEI OneKey Recovery” to the Windows boot manager, which shows a menu at boot.

It’s best if you create a recovery partition immediately after the clean installation of Windows. This way you will avoid backing up viruses, malware, or other issues that may cause problems later on. Also try to carry out this task without backing up your personal data, having movies, music, photos, and other documents will make the recovery partition even larger and it will take longer to recover later.

Recovery

Recovering your Windows installation using the recovery image will depend on the settings you have configured. For example, if you left all the defaults settings, simply reboot your computer and at boot choose “Enter into AOMEI OneKey Recovery” to enter into the recovery mode and just follow the easy on-screen directions. Or you can launch the utility, click OneKey System Recovery (see image on step 2), and follow the on-screen instructions.

Remember that AOMEI OneKey Recovery works on all major versions of Windows, as such this how-to guide should work on Windows 7 and Windows 8.1, too.