How to Create a Custom, Updated Windows 10 Recovery Partition

There’s some preparation required before you create your windows recovery image, though this is reduced if you already keep your OS maintained and up-to-date. First, make sure your PC is fully updated, has the user accounts and software you want to be included, and has the themes/settings you’d prefer. Once complete, boot from Windows installation media by following this guide.

1. Open Command Prompt via Windows Installation Media

   
   Once your PC boots, ignore the setup screen and press “Shift + F10” to open the command-line interface.
   
   

2. (Optional) Initialize networking services

   
   You only need to do this if you want to save your Windows 10 recovery image on a network drive. To do so, type wpeinit and press “Enter”.
   
   

3. (Optional) Map a network drive for network drive storage

   
   In Command Prompt, enter the following command, replacing ‘Z:’ with your mapped drive, ‘storageserver’ with the server name, and ‘images’ with the name of your shared folder:
   
   net use Z: \\storageserver\images



4. Confirm your Windows 10 recovery drive with diskpart

   
   Before you create your Windows recovery image, it’s worth double-checking that you know the correct letter for your Windows drive and to save your image to. In Command prompt, verify this by typing diskpart, then list vol.
   
   You’ll be faced with an output similar to below. In our case, we can look at the size and use our previous knowledge to determine that ‘C’ is our OS/source drive and ‘D’ is the destination we want to save our recovery image to. Be sure to type “exit” to leave diskpart before you continue.
   
   

5. Capture the Windows recovery image

   
   We’re now ready to capture our OS image, which is possible via the following command, which you should customize to suit your needs:
   
   dism /capture-image /imagefile:D:\install.wim /capturedir:C:\ /name:"Recovery Partition" /description:"Custom Recovery Partition" /compress:none

/imagefile: determines where to save the captured image and its name, install.wim. /capturedir tells DISM the root folder of the disk to capture, which is C:\ for us. /name is quite self-explanatory – an identifier for our image, while /description gives some further detail. The /compress:none option turns off compression, which makes the process faster, but you can also use /compress:maximum if you want the image to take up less space.
   
   When complete, you can close out of Command Prompt and restart your PC.
   
   

Now we’ve captured our Windows recovery image, but there’s still a bit of work to do to ensure it remains accessible if our main OS runs into problems. First off, check that it actually saved:

1. Check your folder for ‘install.wim’

   
   In Windows Explorer, navigate to the place you saved your Windows recovery image (in our case I:/), and look for “install.wim” to verify the save was performed correctly. Also check the size of the file, as this will become important in a second when we open our recovery partition creator.
   
   

2. Create your Windows 10 Recovery Partition

   
   In a drive with enough spare space, create a recovery partition at least as large as the recovery image. We chose to make it 270 GB, rather than 269, just for some extra leeway. If you’re unsure how to create a partition, follow our in-depth guide here.
   
   

3. Mount a Windows 10 ISO

   
   Mount a Windows 10 ISO by double-clicking it, ensuring its the same version as your current OS. If you didn’t use an ISO to create your Windows Installation Media, you can obtain one by following this guide.
   
   

4. Copy the Windows 10 Home or Windows 10 Pro setup files to your recovery partition

   
   Windows will mount the ISO as a new disk drive with several folders, including ‘boot’, ‘efi’, etc. Copy all of the files to your newly created Windows 10 recovery drive.
   
   

5. Delete the install.wim in the setup files from your ISO

   
   Your ISO will have come with a pre-made ‘install.wim’ file, the default OS. We need to delete this to make room for our custom one. Navigate to the “sources” folder and delete “install.wim”. It may be called “install.esd” if you made your ISO with the Media Creation Tool.
   
   

6. Copy your custom Windows 10 recovery image to the sources folder

   
   Keeping the sources folder open, drag the custom “install.wim” you created to the “sources” folder on the recovery drive. The transfer may take a little while.
   
   

Now we’re almost there; we just need to add the recovery partition to our boot menu. For this, we’ll be using a tool called EasyBCD, which you can download here. Despite the prompt, there’s no need to like the Facebook page. Install the software before you continue.

1. Add a new EasyBCD entry

   
   Open EasyBCD and look for “Add New Entry” button in the left-hand menu. Click it.
   
   

2. Add your Windows recovery image as “WinPE”

   
   Look under the “Portable/External Media” heading for the “WinPE” tab. Click it, applying the following settings:
   
   – Type: WIM Image (Ramdisk)
   – Name: Windows 10 Recovery
   – Path: Your boot.wim file (in the sources folder of your Windows 10 recovery drive.)
   
   

3. Write the changes to the Boot Menu

   
   Press the ‘+’ button to write these changes to your Windows 10 Boot Menu.
   
   

4. Hide the Windows 10 recovery drive in Disk Management

   
   We don’t need the recovery drive cluttering our UI anymore. In partition manager, hide the Drive letter by following this tutorial.
   
   

5. Restart to Advanced Startup Options to select the recovery partition

   
   To check our recovery partition, which must boot to Advanced Startup options. If you don’t know how to do this, you can follow our previous guide. Verify that /sources/boot.wim shows up under our available options and select it if you’d like to restore your OS.