How to Create a Recovery USB Drive to Fix Your Computer

You know you’ve got a serious PC problem when your computer refuses to get through even the first phase of startup properly. If you can’t get into Windows or macOS at all, then your troubleshooting options become a lot more limited.

Hopefully, you won’t find yourself in such a scenario very often—or at all. But if you do have problems booting up your computer as normal, a recovery USB drive can save your system and restore access to your files and apps.

A recovery USB drive is a separate, portable flash drive that your computer can use instead of your main hard drive to start up from. Whatever issues you’re having on your system can be bypassed, and you can get access to a variety of troubleshooting tools—or even reinstall the operating system, if needed.

These rescue drives are free to create and can be made in advance on your own computer (or using someone else’s computer if yours is having issues). The steps are relatively straightforward, though copying the necessary software to the drive can take as long as a couple of hours, so plan accordingly.

Create a Recovery USB Drive for Windows

When it comes to Windows, you can get started by searching for the Recovery Drive application in the search box on the taskbar: Click the program link when it appears to launch the setup tool, and check the Back up system files to the recovery drive box before clicking Next to get the most comprehensive backup.

You’ll be prompted to plug in a USB drive, which must be at least 32 GB in capacity. Note that configuring it as a recovery USB drive will delete all of the data already stored on it, so make sure it doesn’t contain anything important. Make sure the drive is selected, then click Next and Create to confirm.

The Windows recovery drive creator utility.

Courtesy of David Nield

The process of creating the USB recovery drive can take some time—about two hours based on my testing, though the speed of your system and USB drive will play a part in that—and you’ll see a message on screen when the job is done.

When your recovery USB drive is called upon, you need to plug it into a spare port on your PC and boot from it. How this is done varies between different computers and different manufacturers, but you should find instructions in the documentation that came with your system, or on the web. Typically, you need to press a key (often Esc, F2, or Delete) when the computer is starting up, which will pause the normal boot routine and ask you to select which disk you want to boot from. At that point, you select the connected USB drive.

You can reinstall Windows from the recovery drive.

Courtesy of Microsoft

After a few moments, you’ll see the Windows recovery menu. Besides options to turn off the PC or continue to Windows (which presumably isn’t working, if you’re resorting to this approach), you can select Troubleshoot. This gives you access to a variety of troubleshooting options, including a Command Prompt interface, the System Restore tool, and a Start-up Repair option that can fix some basic issues with Windows.

If you’ve exhausted all the options under Troubleshoot, you can opt for Recover from a drive instead. This reinstalls Windows from scratch, leaving you with a clean slate and (hopefully) a fixed computer. All of your applications and data will be wiped in the process however, so you’ll need to rely on your digital backups to get up and running again.

Create a Recovery USB Drive for macOS

For macOS, you need a USB drive with at least 14 GB of available storage on it. You also need a copy of the current version of macOS, which you can find in the Mac App Store. Search for the name of the latest macOS release (so “Sequoia” at the time of writing), click Get on the listing page, then cancel the installation wizard when the downloading is done—you don’t want to install it, you just need the file.

You need to find the right macOS version for your drive.

Courtesy of David Nield

Next, get your USB drive connected to your Mac, and launch Terminal. Type or paste the following command (including the spaces), replacing “MyVolume” with the name of the USB drive as it appears in Finder, and press Enter:

sudo /Applications/Install macOS Sequoia.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia –volume /Volumes/MyVolume

If you’re setting up a recovery USB drive for an older version of macOS, you need to replace “Sequoia” with whatever the software’s name is (there’s a full list here). Type your macOS account password, hit Enter, then tap Y and Enter to confirm. The USB drive will be fully wiped before it’s set up as a recovery drive, and you’ll see a message when the USB drive is ready to use.

Your recovery drive is created through Terminal.

Courtesy of David Nield

To boot up from a recovery USB drive, should your Mac not be starting properly, plug the drive into a spare USB port. If you’re using a newer Apple Silicon machine, turn on your Mac laptop or desktop by pressing the power button, then keep holding the power button until the startup options appear. You’ll be able to select the USB drive from here.

For older Macs running Intel chips, hold down the Option key when booting up. Let go when you see the list of bootable drives appear on screen. Again, you can choose the USB recovery drive you’ve made to start the computer with. You then get into the troubleshooting menu for the USB drive.

You’ve got a few options here: Disk Utility is a good first port of call, as it includes tools and options that may help you fix your Mac. Your other two main options are to restore your Mac using a Time Machine backup, or to completely reinstall macOS—in which case all your existing files and apps will be wiped, so you’ll need to have your data safely backed up.