Help recovering from fully erased SSD

[MisterEdF]

Don't ask .. I fully erased (using DISKPART) my drive on my SP4 - i5. It has no partitions on it. I forgot to first create a recovery USB.

Can I create a recovery USB drive from a DIFFERENT PC? I know I CAN , but will it work since it's a different version of WIN 10 and different hardware?? Yes, I did download my SP4 image so my recovery image is from the proper software.

 

[lnwj]

Hello! I don't post here much but I am actually doing this very thing now to get rid of the crappy Win 10 1803 update and roll back to 1709.

Download a recovery image for your Surface here: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/surfacerecoveryimage

Create a recovery disk on another PC running Windows 10, any version it doesn't matter, you'll be overwriting the files with the files you download from the above site. Take note of the instructions it mentions:

1. Connect your USB drive to your Surface (use a USB 3.0 drive if you can). (8GB Drive Worked for me)

2. In the search box on the taskbar, type recovery, and then select Create a recovery drive. You might be asked to enter an admin password or confirm your choice.

3. In the User Account Control dialog box, select Yes.

4. Make sure Back up system files to the recovery drive isn’t selected, and then select Next.

5. Select your USB drive, and then select Next > Create. A number of files need to be copied to the recovery drive, so this might take a while.

6. When it’s done, select Finish.

7. Go back to the recovery image .zip file that you downloaded and open it.

8. Drag the files from the recovery image folder to the USB recovery drive you created. Then choose to replace the files in the destination.

9. For info about how to use your new recovery drive, see the “How to reset your Surface to factory conditions” section of Using a Surface USB recovery drive.
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Once you have your recovery drive ready to roll this will guide you through booting from it and restoring the factory image: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4023512/surface-creating-and-using-a-usb-recovery-drive

Good luck!

 

[MisterEdF]

Yea, been there done that. Problem is I have no drive to do that from because it was erased so I needed to make the boot drive on another PC. Did that but it won't boot in the SP4, Yes, the boot order is set for USB first.

 

[lnwj]

Oh sorry for the trouble you're having.

I was able to create my recovery media on a self built Desktop PC running Windows 10 1803 I just plugged in my flash drive and once it was done making a recovery drive I overwrote the files on the drive with the files from the surface recovery ZIP file (Also downloaded on the Desktop PC), then just plugged in the flash drive on my surface, held VOL Down and pressed power then followed the steps to boot from USB stick. Worked like a charm, my Surface is back up and running with 1709 as I type this.

EDIT: If the VOL Down menu doesn't work due to the recovery partition being gone, use VOL Up instead to manually boot from USB drive: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4023511/surface-boot-surface-from-a-usb-device

 

[MisterEdF]

Well, for whatever reason I can't boot off the USB and restore from it. I tried 3 different USB drives with the same results. What did happen is there seems to be a "hidden and protected" partition with recovery files on the computer that even I couldn't erase. While I wasn't able to get to 1709 it did load 1703.

When you created your recovery boot USB drive did you keep "BACKUP SYSTEM FILES" checked or unchecked in the recovery app that creates the USB? One M'soft article says keep it checked and another says DO NOT KEEP IT CHECKED. I did NOT.

 

[lnwj]

I left it unchecked.

 

[MisterEdF]

I left it unchecked.

Oh well. At least I have 1703.

Anyway now I am in a catch 22. I can't update bios from Windows Update because battery is not above 40% (why does it matter, it's plugged in) but my battery stopped charging months ago and it will never be above 0%. Ready to dump this $1500 piece of crap on eBay "AS-IS". Certainly not paying ANOTHER $500 to get it swapped. It was swapped once for "screen flicker" but they won't refund me. $500 down the toilet last year. Never again Microsoft.