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Windows 10 Pro - Recovery with bootable USB stick wipes secondary drive

Has anyone experienced the following issue when recovering a Windows 10 Pro machine using a Windows 10 bootable USB stick?

The computer failed to boot after installing the Windows 10 anniversary edition (BCD error).

I booted the machine to recover the C:\ drive using a bootable USB stick.

I repaired the machine by reverting the machine back to an earlier point using system restore.

I removed the USB stick and booted the machine.

Upon the machine being repaired and booting up the D:\ drive was wiped, is now labelled as “RECOVERY”, and only contains Windows 10 installation media.

Upon checking the D:\ drive in Disk Management the drive has been split in two, the first part of the drive taken up by the recovery media and the remainder now as unallocated space.

 


I’ve managed to recreate the issue on a Desktop PC running Windows 10 Pro but couldn’t see anything online about this.

Has anybody seen this before or know why this occurs?

Hello Toby,

 

We understand the inconvenience you have experienced.

 

What content is available in secondary drive before recovery?

 

A recovery drive can help you troubleshoot and fix problems with your PC, even if it won't start. However, it won't impact the other drive partitions data. It’s really not obvious what caused this behavior. However, before performing troubleshooting for recovery, we always recommend to take backup of personal files going into the recovery environment using bootable media.

 

Keep posted if you require further assistance, we're happy to help you.

 

Thank you.

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Hello Yashwanth,

Many thanks for the quick response.

Before recovery the D:\ drive was just a regular SATA hard drive used to store multimedia for server streaming, there was nothing else on this drive.

There was a third drive configured for recovery, but this was just used to store weekly images of the C:\ drive and was left intact.

Luckily we keep regular backups but I'm keen to understand the issue here so I can change the backup routine accordingly (ie: not use the D:\ drive for storing data if Windows wipes that drive automatically during recovery). 

Thanks in advance.

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Hello Toby,

Thank you for getting back with an update.

As I explained earlier, recovery drive will help you to troubleshoot and fix problems with your PC. During recovery, it won't impact the other drive partitions data. Due to some unknown behavior it might have happened. However, before you initiate recovery process in future, try to take backup of personal files.

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Question Info

Last updated April 24, 2019 Views 887 Applies to: