8 replies to this topic

[spudtrooper]

Microsoft has a handy little tool one the surface that allows you to move the recovery partition to a usb drive. During the process it will prompt if you want to delete the partition and recover the space. Worked great and took about 10 minutes!

http://www.andyrathb...oft-surface-rt/

[spudtrooper]

Freed up 4gb and i'm happy! I did a test boot off the USB drive to verify all is well and just keep the USB stick in the Surface box if I ever need it. MS should definitely post that this functionality is built into the recovery system and completely wizard driven. 4gb is a lot of space to free up and USB sticks are CHEAP.. should just throw in a USB recovery stick in lieu of recovery partition if you ask me

[MorganX]

Nice tip. I don't need the space, but why not?!? 4GB is 4GB. Better the USB than your surface local storage.

[Lord Method Man]

Nice! Thanks for posting.

[~Johnny]

MorganX, on 16 November 2012 - 15:12, said:

Nice tip. I don't need the space, but why not?!? 4GB is 4GB. Better the USB than your surface local storage.

Presumably in the worst case scenario when you're out and about or on a trip and your Surface starts failing to boot - but you can't fix it because you've wiped the recovery partition and left your recovery USB drive at home If you have the space to spare, leaving it on there is probably the better option. But if you need the space, it's always a nice option.

[spudtrooper]

~Johnny, on 16 November 2012 - 15:16, said:

Presumably in the worst case scenario when you're out and about or on a trip and your Surface starts failing to boot - but you can't fix it because you've wiped the recovery partition and left your recovery USB drive at home If you have the space to spare, leaving it on there is probably the better option. But if you need the space, it's always a nice option.

If I travel, i'll just bring the usb stick with me.. but I'm often not that far from a MS store where I would make them fix it

[xendrome]

From the look of the contents of the stick, it appears to be a clean install, would that be safe to assume? Verses it making a backup copy of your system as it is now when you create the the recovery to USB

[efjay]

xendrome, on 16 November 2012 - 15:46, said:

From the look of the contents of the stick, it appears to be a clean install, would that be safe to assume? Verses it making a backup copy of your system as it is now when you create the the recovery to USB

Makes sense because the recovery partition doesnt hold a backup of your current config and the recovery partition would wipe everything back to default if you had to use it for a restore.

[spudtrooper]

yes, recovery is full wipe when you boot off this recovery media. Most games store their saves on xbox live and most apps use skydrive profiles/saves so when you re-install its not hard to recover.