Recovery Media Creation Utility: HP Recovery Manager Has Stopped

[ConnorWGarvey]

I'd really appreciate some help with creating a recovery disk.  The Recovery Media Creation Utility crashes for me and I'm unable to create my recovery disk.  There are two ways that it fails.

1. If a USB drive is inserted when the program starts, it crashes immediately.
2. If a USB drive is not inserted, the program prompts me to insert it.  As soon as I do, it crashes.

I've had this problem since I bought the laptop and hoped it would be resolved with a software update.  Now, I find myself in need of a recovery disk and with no way to create it.  HP's phone support wanted to charge me a $100 "one-time support" fee.  Can anyone please give me a recommendation about how to resolve this?

[WAWood · Accepted solution]

@ConnorWGarvey

Hello;

Allow me to welcome you to the HP forums!

There are different options generally available in the built-in utilities for creating Recovery Disks -- and the option that uses only ONE disk will only save the OS (and maybe the drivers), but not much else.  I find that basically useless as Recovery Media.

My suggestion is you consider using a third-party solution known as Macrium Reflect (MR).

I prefer to use third-party recovery solutions for the following reasons:
1) More flexibility and reliabilty -- can make recovery media as often as you like, not restricted to one attempt, which if it fails, then you are stuck.
2) More media options -- can create media in DVD, USB stick, or external drive format
3) Mounting option -- can "mount" the save images as virtual "drives" and extract individual files and folders
4) WinPE boot option -- can install a special boot option that allows you to boot to recovery information and do a repair or restore from there -- when Windows will not boot

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, USB stick, or DVDs
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 WinPE, 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, USB or DVDs stick in only a few minutes.

Good Luck

[ConnorWGarvey]

Thank you for the detailed answer! I used the application you recommended to make a backup of the restore partition. I need to order a bigger backup drive to make the Windows backup you suggested. My secondary drive is turning into Swiss cheese, so I wanted to get the recovery data backed up before replacing it.