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Caltorography's avatar
Caltorography
Level 4
5 years ago

Can My Recovery Disk Hold Other Files, too?

Hi!

Just created my SPIFF recovery disk.  Tested it.  Works great.  Win10 & Lights Out.

Seeing as how I use my laptop on the road, didn't seem to make much sense to me to not have the disk itself at-hand.

I carry a wee usb on my keychain.  Just had to get a new one.  Since I had no files on there, I used that keychain USB as the destination for my recovery disk.

Now!  By-and-large, I've got that USB on the keychain for when I need to grab a document easily.

So!  My question - having used the drive as the location for the .iso file, is that drive now somehow DEDICATED?  So that, I should not use it to occasionally be a destination for the random PDF and what-not that I need to have a temporary home for?

Put another way - should I just be safeguarding that drive for the .ISO alone?  Or, is it OK to have it ALSO function as a working USB drive?

And, if it is NOT safe...what other alternatives to the always-on-handedness feature that I'm looking for do you suggest?  Easy enough!  ANOTHER wee drive!  :D  They ARE tiny.  But, is there some other clever solution you all have for how to have the recovery disk on-hand in your on-the-road gear?

For what it's worth, I also created a lights out restore.  Not sure how that affects things.

Sincerely,

Cal

16
Windows 10

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  • Caltorography's avatar
    Caltorography
    Level 4
    5 years ago

    Hi Again!

    I notice that now, when I startup, there's always a 10-second screen that offers me the choice of Win 10 or Lights Out.  I guess is to be used as a sort of built-in recovery disk in case booting is giving me trouble. 

    Am I right about that?

    But, in my experience the recovery DRIVE, that is the USB, always semmed to be the tool for when the PC was just mixed up - wouldn't boot at all.  Which!  Brings me back to the original question - can I use the drive AS a drive?  And, what are the alternatives other than toting around the .ISO in its own drive if that's necessary?

    Sincerely,

    Cal

    • akihiro1's avatar
      akihiro1
      Moderator
      5 years ago

      Yes, you are right!
      Lights out is one of recovery disks (SRD), and it is installed as a folder on C drive.
      When booting from the Lights out, Windows PE is loaded on memories.
      Users can restore all drives including C drive on the Lights out.
      However, if a HDD including C drive is replaced, Lights out does not work.

      If you create a ISO file as the recovery disk (SRD), SRD wizard can directly write the ISO file to USB memory (Thumb drive) only when your computer is BIOS-based.
      If your computer is UEFI-based, you can write the ISO file to the USB memory using 3rd party software (like Rufus).
      The USB memory is a bootable disk, and it is available as SRD even after replacing the HDD including C drive.

      After writing the ISO file to the USB memory, you can put your data in the USB memory using a remaining space.

       

      • Hans05's avatar
        Hans05
        Level 4
        5 years ago

        Note that Windows 10 can now create multiple partitions on a flash drive. As a result, you can create a small partition to serve as your recovery drive, then create additional partion(s) for your other data. If you have private data you can even BitLocker encrypt one or more of those additional partitions.