Why does my 7 month old computer not have a recovery drive installed

[Mad-PC-user]

I was thinking of upgrading to Windows 11 and wanted to backup my PC. I have discovered I don't have a recovery drive! Why not? How do I get it back? And where did it go? 

I hope someone can help me.

Thank you in advance 

[Paul_Tikkanen · Accepted solution]

HI;

Most of the newer HP notebook and desktop PC's no longer have recovery partitions.

You can use a free utility such as Macrium Reflect to create a system image and store it on a portable hard drive.

Macrium Software | Reflect Free Edition

The software will also have you make a bootable rescue DVD or USB drive you boot from to access the system image stored on your portable hard drive.

What HP offers for your PC is a utility you can use to make a bootable USB recovery drive that will reinstall W10, the drivers and the software that originally came with your PC.

That would be the equivalent to the old recovery partition, except you boot from the USB flash drive to factory reset the PC instead.

Here is an info link for how to use that utility...

HP Consumer PCs - Using the HP Cloud Recovery Tool (Windows 10) | HP® Customer Support

[Mad-PC-user]

Ok...Thank you! Thank you for the links also.   😊  

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome.