Hp recovery manager won't recognize my flash drive!

[danno300]

ll new flash drives, to be windows 8 certified appear as a fixed drive. recovery manager only works with removable drives. the only good option now is to make disks, like in the past.  I found this out myself after buying a sandisk 32gb drive to use. it would be nice if hp would come up with a fix for this, or sandisk, or microsoft. but they are all to busy blaming each other for this to worry about the customer. hope this will help.

[meowwl]

I've been waiting for MONTHS for them to come up with a fix for this. I've got to think that they're all sitting on their thumbs instead of finding a solution.

Honestly, HP's customer support has gone way downhill from what it used to be....Really sad, because I used to tell people that I was an HP customer for life, just because of their customer service. Now, they seem not to give a rats patooty about their customers.

[NotebookBits]

Same problem here.  Found a fix.  Hope this link works for you all:  EightForums Post .  Just in case that link doesn't work for you, here's the full url so you can copy and paste it into your browser's address field:  http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/5132-recovery-drive-create-usb-flash-drive-windows-8-a.html

I used the method whereby you press the windows logo key and the letter R key to bring up the good old "run" box.  Type in "recoverydrive.exe" (without the quotes of course) and away you go.  Since mine is a HP Pavillion notebook with Windows 8 installed at the factory, running that executable (exe) immediately brought up the screen mentioned in that EightForums post giving the option to "copy contents from the recovery partition to the recovery drive."  Of course, what they mean is it will copy the contents of the hard drive "recovery" partition containing the HP recovery files to the USB flash drive that Windows will make bootable.

As it says, it will format your flash drive.  On my little notebook computer, the Windows "recoverydrive.exe" stated it needed a flash drive of at least 32 GB (gigabytes) although the recovery files on the hard drive are only about 26 GB.

My flash drive only accepts writes at a speed of about 6MB/second so it will take a long time to do the deed....like 20 to 40 minutes.

You'll have to set your computer's power options to stay awake for 60 minutes or so because even though that program is running, my computer went to sleep anyway.  To be safe, I cancelled the process and started all over once I modified my power options so the computer would stay awake long enough to do the entire flash drive creation task.

I don't know why the HP utility fails but we know it does fail for many of us.  My guess is that it can't handle a flash drive larger than 16GB but the recovery files we need to copy are much larger than that.  From what I read at other HP forum posts, there was once a 16GB limit on the flash drive size and it used the same HP program name (rebecca.exe) to do the deed.  Maybe HP didn't bother updating "Rebecca" because they expected people to use the built-in Windows utility?

I'm pretty sure most people don't even bother making recovery media.  I think most people are like my friends and family who just use the computer until it dies then pay a geek squad about $150 for data recovery and rescue.

However, for those of us who want a reliable method of managing mission critical tasks, I hope the fix found in the EightForums helps everyone.

I just used a really inexpensive Sandisk Cruiser Glide 32GB USB 2.0 sticks that were about $14 each on sale at Staples.  It's working fine.

If it was a drive I'd read and write to frequently, I'd pay a bit more for a USB 3.0 stick but the extra speed isn't important for this task.  It's going to take a write one time and maybe never get read only once or twice its life.  (My notebook has 2 of the USB 3.0 ports and 1 of the USB 2.0 ports.)

I'm not going to trial the recovery flash drive after its made.  One thing you might need to consider is that it might not work using the HP specified "F11" key hit during boot up in order to recover some day in the future.  You might need to look up what the "Windows way" is for booting to that "recovery drive" to reinstall Windows 8.

Good luck y'all.

[NotebookBits]

You'd better set your computer to avoid sleep and avoid hibernation for at least 90 minutes.  I'm not timing this thing but it's taking a long, long time to copy the files.  I think it's all working as best as could possibly be, though.  I know it takes a long while when I copy a bunch of movies and TV shows to my 32GB and 64GB flash drives.

When they advertise these flash drives, they'll excite you with 30 or 40MB/sec speeds but usually they are talking about "read" speeds.  The speed at which they accept a write is whacked to something like 5MB/sec by the time Windows does all of it's parity checking for accuracy and such on top of the fact that the chips in the flash drive just can't take a charge to accept a write as fast as they can offer up a read.

So, correct me if I'm wrong here, but ... the 26 Gigabytes of recovery files on the HP Recovery partition of my hard drive  is roughly 26,000,000,000 (26 billion or giga) bytes and divide that by a write speed of 5MB/sec which is roughly 5,000,000 (5 million or mega) bytes and that comes to around 5,200 seconds total time which is roughly 86.67 minutes.  (26,000,000,000 ÷ 5,000,000 = 5,200). [Of course 5,200 seconds ÷ 60 seconds per minute = 86.67 minutes.]

(Please don't yell at me for describing in such detail.  Some who read these forums may benefit from the refresher/tutorial.)

So, round that off to 90 minutes and there you go.  That means, while you watch that green progress bar and your eyes cross and you think it's not moving or something is wrong ... just wait ... because it could easily take 1 1/2 to 2 hours to do the whole thing.

Even if HP does update rebecca.exe (the HP recovery program), it's still going to take 1 to 3 hours to write that amount of data to a flash drive.

You could speed it up a bit if you pay the extra $5 to $10 for a USB 3.0 flash drive and if your computer has a USB 3.0 port available.  (Of course, if your computer has only USB 2.0 ports, there's no need to spend the extra money.)

Okay.  I'm done.  Good luck, again.  Of course, now that I've typed all of this, I expect HP will release the updated version of rebecca.exe and this will all be a waste of time.

Don't you love computers?  Me, too.

[NotebookBits]

Just to let you know, I tried to boot with the flash drive and it booted up just as the EighForums post said it would.  I made selections but stopped at the point just before it would begin a restoration process.  I don't want to give up my current configuration to a possible error.  However, it looks like it will work as designed.

I'm only guessing, but, I would expect Microsoft has designed in a "verification" routine whereby it checks to see that what is supposed to be on the flash drive is actually there.  Based on that presumption, I'd say there's a 99% chance this flash drive will restore to computer to factory condition.

On my HP notebook, hitting F10 repeatedly brings up the BIOS settings so I can choose the boot order.  But, even easier, is to repeatedly hit "esc" so it brings up a menu of items from which I can boot.  The flash drive is listed and I can just choose that without making BIOS setting changes that I'll have to revert back later on.

Okay.  Gone now for sure.  Everyone at the Christmas party is yelling at me.  I can't hide any longer.

[MrCX]

Just wanted to say I contacted HP support about this, I couldn't get my 64gb flash drive to format and create a recovery image. My Win 8.1 touchscreen laptop is under warranty and they sent me a flash drive for recovery that had windows 8 certificate of authenticity on the flash drive even. I appreciate that. I have had some bad experiences in the past with HP support but this was very helpful.

[mycom1]

This link worked when the HP Recovery Manager cannot recognize SanDisk USB 32 GB in Windows 8.1:

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/windows-and-office/create-a-recovery-drive-in-windows-8/7261/ .

Thank you @CherylG and tech republic

[y2ken]

This is a case of a "Windows 8 Compatible" flash drive not being compatible with Windows 8!

As mentioned already, a "Windows 8 Compatible" USB drive CANNOT be used to create a System Recovery USB Flash Drive! The reason is that Windows 8 mounts a "Windows 8 Compatible" drive as a LOCAL drive and the Recovery Manager requires a REMOVABLE drive! So basically DON'T use a flash drive that says on the package "WINDOWS 8 COMPATIBLE". Use a NON-COMPATIBLE flash drive.

[mycom1]

Was able to create the Recovery disk using Microsoft recovery program, instead of HP Recovery program, using the SANdisk flash drive unrecognized by HP Recov prog, on the same Windows 8 computer. So, same flash drive, same computer, worked using Microsoft Recov prog. The problem is HP Recovery Program. No need to buy new flash drive.

[savvy2]

I love that, don't use windows 8 memory stick to backup windows 8. priceless......

are not all new sticks win 8? compat?

same here, i have the most expensive Sandisk extreme, 32gb Flash drive.

tried all permutations of 3 USB ports and all formats.  fat32/Fatex and NTFS

the stick is seen by every program and This computer explorer but not "create restore"

I upgraded day 1 to 8.1, after 16 hours of 100 win 8.0 updates.  then the 8.1.

16hr due to full update crashes, had to do them 10 at a time.  to get it to take, (wired to 50mbits/sec. fiber net)

i guess this create retore will make 8.0? not 8.1

hp 17.3  e-0067cl.

so far no update from HP.  after what, 1year?

i do have 1  full update,  using other other applications,  Using Paragon 2014, to external 2TB drive.

but would like the original HP restore .   And burning 7 DVD is not my bag..... not ever.

ill just have to abandon my idea and make clone disk.

16 is too small

32 ok ,but fails. do looking to real , like real HDD. 

64 to big. GB. 

I'm curious, what does HP do, on lap tops (notbooks). with no DVD. at all, like most are like now.

?? fail?

glad to see i'm in good company, misery loves that...