donline :
Thanks for your guidance and patience, James Mason
I was wondering what's the advantage of creating a copy of Windows 10 (with the media creation tool) compared with the 'recovery version' already being hidden on the laptop? And can the Windows setup file(s) become corrupted on the hard drive?
When you mention that Windows 10 would be downloaded (with the media creation tool), would this be 'downloaded' from the laptop's hard drive or would it be online (from MS's servers)? And can I just download Windows 10 without having to go through the fresh re-installation process?
Do I need product keys and things just to create a copy of Windows 10 to USB memory stick? I was thinking about just doing this (to have a backup of Windows 10 for the future) without necessarily going through the whole fresh re-installation process.
What's the difference with the backup of the whole system - would that include the programs I've installed plus my personal files, in addition to the Windows 10 installation? (I think I just want to backup Windows 10 as I can always easily re-install programs and backup my personal files externally).
I've managed to find the laptop's user manual online, so I'm going to have a read through that and find out where the Windows 10 installation is (and product key).
Also, managed to find the drivers on the support page (there's quite a few and was wondering which are just bloatware).
How does it work with the fresh re-installation process? Do you have to uninstall the current version of Windows 10 first or does the USB memory stick version/copy automatically wipe the old version and re-install the clean version?
Hmm, so at the moment, I'm looking at these two options:
1) Create an external backup of Windows 10 (using the media creation tool) on a memory stick. Plus save the driver files (from the ASUS support page) as well on the memory stick. Then go through the system with Revo and CCleaner to remove unnecessary programs/files. Then on-going, backup my personal files with an external HDD.
2) Wipe the system (Windows 10 and all programs/drivers) and then try to re-install everything from scratch.
I guess the easy option would be number 1, but I'm still interested in attempting option 2. What's the worst that could happen?!
Cheers
1. The advantage of creating your own copy of Windows is that it's a copy Asus hasn't touched and loaded with unnecessary software. The disadvantage is it's also a copy Asus hasn't touched and preloaded with the correct drivers for your laptop. Yes it's possible for a dozen reasons that the hard drive/recovery partition (setup files) can get damage and the data becomes corrupt. It's not a huge worry though.
2. It's downloaded online, "download" refers to data transfers over the internet
only, otherwise you're just moving/transfering data locally, reading/writing it from local hard drives. Yes you can download an untouched copy of the OS with having to install it on your computer, if say you wanted to install it on another computer (and had a separate Key for it)
3. As the others mentioned it's always smart to have a backup incase the installation goes wrong, and especially if there's any important documents you want to save, as on a clean install everything that was there previously is lost.
4. You don't need product keys to create a copy of Windows, because during the install it asks you for your key, but you have installed it already so it either A) won't ask, or B) you can skip and when it finishes it will eventually check the hardware for what key is registered with it and use that without asking you.
5. A backup of your whole system would be so you could restore it exactly the way it is currently. It would include literally everything on the hard drive, hence why the backup could be so large. Your programs are generally things you don't backup separately because they have more connections throughout the computer that are only established when they're actually installed, and you can always reinstall a program.
6. You don't need to read through the whole thing, it should be mentioned in the table of contents and if not it'd be under one of the first few sections most likely or under the recovering OS section or replacing hard drive section. (although it wouldn't kill you to actually know your laptop well)
7. Yes there's a lot of drivers, they should all be listed as "drivers" though and not "software".
8. Part of any Windows installation is the formating/removal of all data from the hard drive/partition. You don't have to do any prework besides telling the computer to boot from a USB/CD drive instead of the hard drive. And you can actually most likely run the new Windows install from within windows after you've created it and tell it you want to do a clean install there and it will reboot the system the correct way to do it for you.
Finally, I'd say you actually kind of want to do a combo of both option one and two. I would use the Windows Backup utility to create a backup file on your external HDD, as well as just manually copying any documents you want to save there as well for easy restoration, It's not unwise to put the drivers on here as well. And then do the wipe-the-system install to get a version of windows guaranteed to not have any bloatware on it, then install the drivers from the external HDD and download/reinstall any programs you want.
Doing option one is actually gonna be pretty hard/time consuming because you have to research what to get rid of and what to keep, and there's not good list because Windows itself has a ton of programs/ect that it needs but don't sound important to the average user.