Moving Win10 Media Recovery to new USB drive

[HeyItsDave]

I used the HP Recovery Manager to create my one set of Win10 installation media.  Despite having a 32GB USB 3.0 flash drive connected and selected, the Recovery Manager decided to instead WIPE the SSD hard drive in my HP Omen chassis and use it instead, thereby destroying thousands of saved documents and photos.  And yes, I verified that I had the USB drive selected!!!  😠😠😠😠😠😠😠😠😠

To add insult to injury, the Win10 media installation files are now on the SSD and not the USB drive.  How can I move the media installation files from the wiped SSD to the USB Drive and ensure that the USB it will still be bootable and in the proper format for media installation whenever I need it?

[WAWood]

@HeyItsDave 

I would certainly NOT do what you are attempting to do -- as my experience is that a different approach is more likely to get positive results.

First off, continuing to use the drive where the documents existed is only going to guarantee that you will never recover them.  So, my approach with this drive would be to remove it from the PC and address doing data recovery on it as soon as possible.  (see more on this below)

Second, I would abandon the OEM approach to recovery media and use a much better, more reliable, and more flexible free approach -- that of using Macrium Reflect (MR)  (more on this below)

---------- Data Recovery ----------

Your best bet for recovering data now is to do the following:
1) Remove the disk drive from the old PC. If this is a SATA hard drive or a SATA SSD, this is a simple thing to do. If this is an m.2 SSD, that could be either screwed to the motherboard or soldered to the motherboard. If the second, you would need to have a techician remove it for you, or you risk seriously damaging the PC doing it yourself.
2) If you have a desktop PC with a spare hard drive connector, then connect the old drive to that. If the old drive is a SATA drive, connect both the power cable and the data cable. (This adapter is illustrated below) If the old drive is an m.2 SSD, you will need a USB-to-mSATA cable.

3) Try to retrieve the files and folders you want to save from the old drive and copy them to the new PC.

If this does not work, then you need to do the following:
1) Download and install this utility on a working PC http://www.majorgeeks.com/news/story/recover_data_in_3_steps_with_minitool_power_data_recovery_free_...
2) Run the data recovery utility to see what can be retrieved from the old drive.

If that tool does not find what you need, an alternative is Recuva http://www.piriform.com/recuva

And, if that does not work well, the best tool out there is this one, but only the demo version is free https://www.runtime.org/data-recovery-software.htm

---------- Macrium Reflect ----------

I personally prefer to use third-party Backup solutions as they tend to be both more flexible and more reliable than any built-in solutions.

Macrium Reflect (MR) provides a FREE version that can be used to image and restore partitions or entire drives.

What I recommend is the following:
1) Download and install Macrium Reflect (MR) from here: http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx
2) Run MR and choose the option: "Create an image of the partition(s) required to backup and restore Windows" to write a full backup to an external drive or USB stick
3) Use the option to create a boot USB stick or CD

My experience is that MR, when using the High Compression option, typically can compress the saved image file to about 50% of the USED space in the OS partition. This means if you have an 80GB OS partition, and 40GB is used, MR only needs about 20GB to store the image file.

I use this all the time and it typically takes less than 15 minutes to do the image backup and about the same time or less to do a restore.

Plus, MR has the option to Add a Recovery Boot Menu entry. This allows you then to boot into WinRE, and you can then use that to do a restore -- when you can't boot into Windows!

NOW, you have the means to restore a full working system from the external drive or USB stick in only a few minutes.