4 Solutions for Windows 10 Can't Create Recovery Drive

Can't create a recovery drive after many attempts

"Today I tried to create a recovery USB drive but failed. I got the error message displaying in the below screenshot, it says 'We can't create a recovery drive' with the added information 'A problem occurred while creating the recovery drive'. I don't get to the screen to select the USB flash drive, so no indication of what the problem is about. It's a 64GB formatted USB drive by the way."

Reasons for not being able to create a recovery drive in Windows 

You can create an either USB flash drive or optical disc based recovery drive on a Windows platform, which lets you easily access a failing Windows system that won't boot. Regardless of how you create a recovery drive, sometimes the whole process doesn't accomplish as expected, and one of the commonly seen error Windows displays is about 'we can't create a recovery drive' without pointing out the exact error source.

So, you have to dig out by yourself, by learning some general reasons and making a preliminary judgment.

• The option 'back up system files to the recovery drive' requires at least 16GB USB flash drive.
• USB flash drive is with corruption problem that Windows can't format everything on the drive so as to create a recovery drive.
• Windows file system has corrupted.

Solutions for can't create recovery drive in Windows 10, 8 or 7

Based on those mentioned causes that perhaps prevent you from creating a recovery drive in Windows successfully, here are 4 highly suggested solutions that proved to be useful when the recovery drive creation stuck, failed and sent error message 'We can't create a recovery drive'.

Solution 1. Prepare another USB flash drive

If you got an extra USB hard disk in your hand, go ahead replacing the current one and start afresh to create a recovery drive in the same way.

Solution 2. Check & repair USB disk errors

In the case that your flash drive has been using for several years and was formatted many times, it's necessary to check its health state and try to fix the bad sectors on it if found any.

Step 1. Press "Windows + X", click "Command Prompt (Admin)".

Step 2. In the Command Prompt window, type chkdsk E: /f /r /x. Here you should replace E with your drive letter.

If you don't have any technical know-how and want to minimize data risks, using third-party software could be a better choice. The Command line is suitable for computer professionals since wrong commands can cause severe problems. Therefore, we strongly recommend you try an automatic command line alternative.

EaseUS Tools M is a practical computer fixing tool that is safe and light-weighted. It's a perfect alternative to CHKDSK command. Use this one-click tool to solve your computer issues.

To fix file system error or disk error:

Step 1:  DOWNLOAD EaseUS Tools M for Free and install it.

Step 2: Open the software and select the "File showing" option. 

Step 3: Choose the drive and wait for repairing. After the operation completes, click the "View" button to check the drive. 

Solution 3. Check & repair system files corruption

Try to run a System File Checker (SFC) scan to check for any file corruption. SFC scan will scan for corrupt system files on the computer and repair them.

Step 1. Press "Windows + X", click "Command Prompt (Admin)".

Step 2. In the Command Prompt, type the command sfc /scannow and then press "Enter".

Solution 4. Create a USB recovery drive in another way

We think a third-party bootable USB creation tool as the last resort to solve the problem of Windows can't create a recovery drive. When you find no reason and the corresponding solution to troubleshoot the displayed error, try EaseUS file backup software to create EaseUS Todo Backup bootable disk, which works the same as a Windows USB recovery drive for the purpose of disaster recovery and boot from USB on a Windows 10 PC.

Step 1. Launch EaseUS Todo Backup. Expand the menu and click "System Clone" in the lower position.

Step 2. On the "System clone" window, the software will choose the system partition and boot partition by default. Just Choose the USB drive as the destination disk. 

Click on "Advanced options" and then "Create Portable Windows USB drive". Click "OK".

Click "Proceed". The software will start immediately cloning the default partitions of your desktop/laptop to the USB drive. After the cloning process is over, you can safely plug the USB drive out.

Step 3. To boot the cloned system from the USB drive on other Windows devices, just connect the drive to the device. After the connection, wait for the computer configuring system settings and you will finally arrive at the desktop screen that's exactly the same with that of the cloned system.

Put the "username" and "password" of the cloned system. You should now successfully enter the cloned system.