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Creating Recovery disk for each version of win 8?

Pghpooh

Senior member
I am working on my in-laws laptop. They have a hp laptop with win 8 installed on it. The laptop was bought right after win 8 was released.
My in-laws let everyone (grand kids, family members, etc) use the laptop and as a result it was so messed up that when it booted all the screen would do is flash a picture!
I was able to restore it to out of the box condition and got all the win 8.0 updates installed.

Here is where I need some help.
I want to upgrade to win 8.1 but before I do, I want to create a set of recovery disks. When I go to create the recovery disks it says I can only make one copy.
When I update to win 8.1, can I create another set of recovery disks for 8.1???

After I upgrade to win 8.1, I want to finish by updating to the latest release of Win 8. Can I make recovery disks for that too???

The reason for creating recovery disks for each upgrade is I am assuming if there is a problem later on I'll have to go back and do everything step by step as I am doing now.
Thanks
Pghpooh
 
All you need to do is clone the OS partition, with something like acronis, or drive image or ... and then, you have a 'virgin' copy of the OS.
Then, if (when) disaster strikes, you can restore the cloned image.

You can do this for any OS version.
 
I suggested Acronis for backups and cloning but,,,,,,,,, in-laws didn't want to spend the money for anything else.
 
You can get it free from seagate or WD, as long as you have one of those HDs connected, it will work.

You can also use other free image software programs, like clonezilla.
 
Acronis is not very expensive and if they won't pay for it, you should. It will save you grief next time they mess up the computer.
 
Acronis is not very expensive and if they won't pay for it, you should. It will save you grief next time they mess up the computer.

Normally I don't agree with stuff like that, but if you are providing gratis support for the in-laws... the $20 you spend on Acronis might be worth it vs the time you just spent trying to recover the OS. And, like Elixer mentioned, if they happen to have a WD or Seagate drive (I didn't know about the Seagate version... 😀 ) you can download a free limited-functionality copy of Acronis... that's what I did on my HTPC and it works very well.

Seems to me if you upgrade to 8.1 and make a recovery disk, that should be all you need... but don't quote me on that.

EDIT:
You can get it free from Seagate...

Is that what Seagate calls 'DiskWizard'?
 
Last edited:
The only way to make recovery disk for windows 8.1 is to have the 8.1 iso as installing the update from 8.0 to 8.1 will not update the recovery partition that is stored on the hard drive

So I would make the 8.0 recovery media, update to 8.1, create a cloned image after installing all updates, removing curd and have it setup.

Yes seagate's tool is called DiskWizard
 
EDIT:
Is that what Seagate calls 'DiskWizard'?
Yeah...

http://knowledge.seagate.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/005922en?language=en_US


rtaImage
 
I agree with an image once you get everything installed and updated.

However, don't spend the money on Acronis, even though it is a great image software.

The best, hands down and free, is Macrium Reflect.

http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx

Also has the ability to create recovery disk so when they completely crash the system just pop that puppy in and plug your drive with the image in and away ya go. 🙂
 
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