With the recent reports where a small percentage of Surface RT owners found their devices bricked while attempting to upgrade to Windows 8.1, and Microsoft pushing Surface 2 as a business device, it might be a good time to develop a strategy where USB Recovery drives are kept on-hand. It's a pretty simple task and as more Surface devices roll out in organizations, it could save volumes of time and support headaches later on.
A single USB stick can supply recovery for an entire fleet of Surface RT's or Surface Pro's. The Recovery Drive takes about 15 minutes to create and only requires around 256MB of storage. USB drives are a cheap solution, and most IT Pros have a pile sitting in a drawer obtained as SWAG from tech conferences. Depending on the number of Surfaces rolled out in the organization, many companies could safely issue a USB Recovery Drive with every device.
Walk through the steps to create the Recovery Drive here: How to Create Recovery Media
If you have both RT and Pro units deployed, a USB Recovery Drive would have to be created for each model.
