I hate to ask this, because it’s technically off topic, but it’s a stumbling block I’m facing in trying to install F43 Workstation on a new Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5 laptop.
Though I plan usually to boot only to Fedora and will repartition to give Fedora most of the disk, I want to keep the pre-installed Windows 11 installation. Just in case something goes wrong, I want to make a Windows recovery drive before installing F43. This would be for the system only; there are no files of my own to be backed up.
It seems simple enough: just run the recovery drive creation tool that’s already installed in Windows. The tool itself specifies a minimum disk size of 32 GB. The only thumb drive I have that’s large enough is a 128-GB Memorex USB 3.2. Should do it, right?
Well, the tool ran overnight, and was still not finished this morning. Then it suddenly crashed without leaving an error message.
When I google around to find out how long it should take to make a recovery disk, I see indications that it depends on the size of the recovery disk itself. Might I have better luck if I used a smaller USB stick?
That intuitively seems a bit weird. Is the idea that Windows selectively includes more “stuff” in the recovery drive if it has a larger disk to write to?
Since this is for emergencies only, why create a recovery stick at all? Lenovo is pretty good at providing recovery media if/when you need them. You can just go to their support site, select your laptop, and in the “software” section select something along the lines of “obtain recovery media”. Even though the language they use suggests some kind of ordering process, I was able to download the recovery media for my Thinkpad.
So, long story short, instead of relying on Windows and trying again and again to create a USB stick, you could just download the image from Lenovo, either now or when you actually need it.
It seems weird to me too. Maybe the recovery tool writes zeroes to the unused space? Or maybe it’s just wrong: you can’t believe everything you see on the Internet!
Thanks, I’m pretty sure it’s the real thing – I bought it from in a bricks-and-mortar store operated by a major retail chain.
Anyway, I was able to create a recovery USB on the second try with the same stick. (Upthread I said I would rely on Lenovo’s website to create a recovery stick if needed for my new computer, but I realized I lacked back-up for the Windows installation on the old computer.)
Thanks – I didn’t know I could download recovery media from the OEM. So I’ve ploughed ahead with installing F43 without creating a recovery USB for Windows.
From Lenovo’s website, though, It does seem, that Lenovo lets you download recovery media only once and may not allow you to download once your device is out of support. So I plan to make a recovery USB fairly soon.