Solved Reinstalling Windows from a recovery disk rather than Windows installation media

When creating a recovery disk from within Windows, you are given a choice to copy system files to the recovery disk which then allows you to reinstall Windows from that recovery disk.

If I create a recovery disk without copying system files it takes mere seconds to create that flash disk. If I choose to copy system files it takes a ridiculous amount of time (like an hour).

So, that got me wondering: Is there actually any advantage to reinstalling Windows from a recovery disk rather than a plain, standard Windows installation media? I have never actually reinstalled Windows from a recovery disk so I'm looking for some feedback from someone who has done so. Does installing Windows from a recovery disk offer any advantages? Does it install a copy of Windows that is "customized" in any way? For example, does it also restore your existing user accounts or do ANYTHING other than a plain, vanilla, clean install of Windows?

Whenever I reinstall Windows, I always use either a plain Windows installation media, an unattended setup, or a sysprep image that I have previously prepared. I'm just trying to fill in a gap in my knowledge here.

I suggest to make a full backup of the disk or even clone it to a spare disk. Restoring a full backup or recloning back to an SSD takes at most 30 minutes. I would clean install Windows, add drivers and the basic apps (office, WinRAR, VLC, Chrome etc) and then take a full backup. All I have to do is backup my data. Any time I have to restore from the backup I have a ready to use system in about half an hour and only need to restore my data from their backup.

The recovery disk includes hardware specific drivers that may not be included in the vanilla Windows downloaded by Microsoft as well as any provisioning packages for manufacturer's bloatware that will also get re-installed with the recovery disk.

I prefer to make the standard vanilla flash drive from Microsoft's download, and add any specific drivers to it using the dism /export-driver command.

If you have manually downloaded the drivers from manufacturer, save them in a folder inside the USB flash drive to have them handy. At any clean installation install the drivers from the USB flash drive first and then update the graphics drivers.

Thanks for the information. Just as some added information, spapakons, I do exactly as you have suggested. I use Macrium Reflect to make full image backups. I also backup all my drivers and restore them after a clean install as both you and NavyLCDR has suggested. In fact, I take this a step further. If I do a clean install, I use unattended setup so that the initial setup is 100% interaction free. Then I run a script that modifies all my Windows settings including personalization, turning off all nonsense popups and suggestions, modifies many settings in Windows to my personal preferences, and applies all my drivers previously exported using the DISM /export-driver (I actually use pnputil, but it does the same thing).

I have NEVER actually recovered a system using the recovery disk. As I noted in my original post, this was merely to fill in a knowledge gap that I had since I never actually use a recovery disk.

Thank you both for your responses. That helps me understand better the behavior of the recovery media.

There is always something new to learn!