How to Recover Your Surface Using USB Recovery Image

Microsoft Surface lineup made it easy for users to recover their devices if something went wrong by including a recovery partition on every model. However, you can use a USB recovery drive if you can’t reset your Surface with the existing recovery partition.

You must download a recovery image from the Microsoft Support website to create a recovery drive. Please check this article to learn more about downloading the correct recovery image for your Surface device.

Table of contents

  1. How to Create a USB Recovery Drive
  2. Copying Recovery Image Files to Your USB Recovery Drive
  3. Resetting a Surface Using a USB Recovery Drive

How to Create a USB Recovery Drive

Before you can use your USB drive as a USB recovery drive, you will need to use a built-in tool called “Create a recovery drive” to prepare your USB drive for booting. To do so.

Important All USB recovery drives must be formatted to FAT32 before loading a recovery image. For Surface RT and Surface 2, you will need at least 8 GB USB drive, while other models require at least 16GB USB drive for loading the image.

  1. Connect your USB drive to your Surface.
  2. Go to Start and type recovery. Select “Create a recovery drive”.
    Open Create a recovery drive tool
  3. Ensure you uncheck the “Backup system files to the recovery drive” option and click Next.
    Uncheck Backup System Files option
  4. Select your USB drive, and click Next.
    Select Available USB Drive
  5. Click Create.
    Confirm Creating the Recovery Drive
  6. It will take a few minutes to finish creating a recovery drive, after finish click Finish.
    Finish Creating a Recovery Drive
  7. Now, you will see your USB recovery drive labeled “RECOVERY” in File Explorer.
    Recovery Drive in File Explorer

Copying Recovery Image Files to Your USB Recovery Drive

After you finish creating a Recovery Drive, you will need to copy your Surface’s recovery image content to the drive by:

Note If you don’t have the recovery image for your Surface yet, please check out our guide on downloading the official recovery image for Microsoft Surface here.

  1. Open “File Explorer”.
  2. Open your downloaded Surface Recovery Image with the extension “.zip” with File Explorer.
  3. Select all items and drag them to the newly created USB recovery drive.
    Copy Recovery Image Files
  4. You will need to confirm to replace the files in the destination.
    Replace Destination Files
  5. Your USB recovery drive is now ready to reset a Surface to its factory settings.

Resetting a Surface Using a USB Recovery Drive

After creating a USB recovery drive with all recovery image files, you can now use it to recover your Surface to its factory settings. To do so:

  1. Shut down your Surface.
  2. Connect your USB recovery drive to the Surface that you want to reset.
  3. Press and hold the Volume Down button on your Surface, then press and release the Power button.
  4. When you see the Surface logo screen appear, release the Volume Down button.
    How to boot your Surface from a USB Drive
  5. If you do it right, you will see the language options below, and you can select your preferred language.Recovery - Choose Language
  6. Select a keyboard layout.
    Choose Keyboard Layout
  7. Select Troubleshoot.
    Recovery - Troubleshoot
  8. Select Recover from a drive.
    Recovery- Recover form a drive
  9. Select “Fully clean the drive” if you want your Surface to have everything like its factory settings, including the hard drive partition layout.
    Recovery - Fully Clean the Drive
  10. Click Recover to confirm recovery.
    Recovery - Confirm Recoverying
  11. Now, your Surface will reboot and start the recovery process.
    Recovery - Recovering this PC
  12. After recovering your Surface, it will ask you to clear information stored on the TPM chip. Press F12 if you have type cover attached, otherwise press Volume Up button to confirm erasing.
    Recovery - Clear the TPM
  13. After clearing the TPM, it will reboot and take you to set up your Windows.
    Setup - Choose Language