How to Create a USB Recovery Drive for Surface Pro & Laptop (2022)

Learn how to create a USB recovery drive for Surface to fix problems on your laptop as well as reset it to the factory settings. 

Microsoft Surface laptops are great devices that offer a lot of features. But they are not without their faults. One of the most common problems is the inability to boot up your laptop and you need to create a USB recovery drive to fix this problem.

What do you need to create a USB recovery drive?

You will need to prepare an empty USB drive with at least 16 GB in size to store the recovery image. If you still have any important data on your USB drive, it’s better to backup them to your computer because all data in your USB drive will be erased completely.

In addition, make sure that your USB drive is using FAT32 format. If possible, use a USB 3.0 drive for it has a fast reading and writing process.

Once everything is set, let’s try it!

How to Create a USB Recovery Drive for Surface Pro & Laptop

Method 1: Create a USB Recovery Drive using a Downloaded Factory Image

Note: Use this method if you want to install a fresh copy and restore your device to the factory settings. 

1. Download a recovery image for your Surface model from your PC. The file should be in a .zip format.

2. Plug the USB drive into the USB port on your PC. 

3. Go to Start > recovery drive > Create a recovery drive or Recovery Drive. 

4. If prompted, enter the admin password and confirm your selection.

5. Click Yes in the User Account Control box.

6. Uncheck the Back up system files to the recovery drive and click Next.

7. Choose your USB drive and click Next. 

8. Then, wait until the USB recovery drive is ready and click Finish.

9. Find the recovery image that you downloaded earlier and extract the zip file.