USB repair / recovery stick

[cecinit]

I'd like to make a USB system recovery/repair disk.  

They seem to be faster than the CDs, and more reliable (less easily damaged).

I haven't gotten it working yet.   I've got a working recovery CD, 

and I've tried various recipes to make the USB disk.  I can get the 

USB stick to boot, but as soon as you check the the language option

in the booted recovery system, a window pops up that says this

recovery disk is not for the version of Windows you are trying

to repair.

Has anyone been more successful with this and know what 

the right preparation method is?

Thanks, ==mwh

[WAWood · Accepted solution]

cecinit

You can do this easily in two steps using two free programs -- RUFUS and ImgBurn.

Using ImgBurn, you create an ISO file from the disk you created.

Then, using RUFUS, you create a bootable USB stick from the ISO file you created.

Instructions are here: https://rufus.akeo.ie/

I use these apps all the time, so I know they are safe.

Good Luck

[cecinit]

This was one of the recipes I tried, but it didn't work before.

I would get the popup after booting the USB: This system repair disk is not for this version of windows,

or words to that effect.

There's one more thing I had to do - I had to disconnect the 2 HDDs on SATA ports 1 & 2

(the current boot disk is on SATA port 4).

I think that the reason for the error is that these 2 HDDs do not have a version of Windows

on them.  The ordering of the boot disks seems inflexible in this BIOS - you can change the 

first choice, but the list of disks are kept in a circular list apparently, so you cannot change

the fundamental ordering.    My hypothesis is that the recovery process knows what it

was booted from, & then knows (somehow) the boot order. It won't look at itself for a Windows

system, that's positive, but it then chooses the next thing on the HDD group boot list.

In my case, that's the non bootable HDDs.

The reason the system recovery CD works is that it is in a different group & I have it set to a higher

priority, and I have the HDD list set so that the boot disk is the 1st choice in the HDD group.

I can't prove some of this but it seems repeatable for me.

Good to have this usb stick - I can keep it hanging on the shelf, & it boots & runs very fast compared to the

CD.  But I have to take off the panels & unplug drives, can't reorder flexibly.