Making a factory recovery back up for Windows 8

XxHAMADEHxX

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Jul 22, 2013
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I want to create a recovery image for my Ativ Book 4. Getting tired of dealing with Windows and I want to put Linux Mint God willing.

However if for some reason I need windows again I want to be able to boot it up from an external source because I plan on wiping all the partitions. I was planning on making a bootable disk of the factory image via flash drive but my dad said it was not a good idea because of reliability. I can't make a bootable image out of my external harddrive because I have stuff on it. I can however put a non bootable factory image on my harddrive but I don't know how I will be able to use it later on.
I could buy dvds aswell.

Also is it possible for me to save a non bootable image to my external harddrive and later turn it into a bootable image using a flash drive?

The factory image is 15GB

What should I do friends?
Thanks
 
Solution
Few things as the said.

1) Make a backup. I perfer Macrium Reflect but that is just me. You can't just boot it off a USB drive though it must be imaged or connected to a SATA port or hard drive.

2) If you just want to copy your data off and the programs are meaningless to you and don't care to have it back exactly the way it was just save your stuff then use the Windows 8 Media creation tool here

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/create-reset-refresh-media

and boot off of it, reinstall windows, it should activate automaticlly, and you are good to go.
You have three realistic options

Option 1) Use REDO Backup to make an image file and store it on the external hard drive. This is simply a file, not bootable. You will be able to retain the external hard drive's integrity and files. When you need to access the image, you will have to use Redo backup to restore the image to a hard drive

Option 2) Use REDO backup as mentioned above to create and image. Buy a cheep 2.5" (or whatever the laptop uses) hard drive and restore the image to it. Disclaimer, REDO can only restore images to a hard drive of the same size or bigger than the original partition. You can get around this by making the windows partition as small as possible before making the image. This will not affect the image file's size.

With option two, you can swap the second harddrive in when you need to access windows.


Option 3)
Take an image with Redo backup. Then install linux mint side by side with windows 8. This way you have a dual boot system capable of booting either OS when you turn it on. This is the best solution.


You will notice that I stress taking a backup no matter what route you take. There is a chance that you bork something and will want to revert back to the original image.

Also, secure boot will need to be disabled in order to load a new OS or to do dual boot. No a big deal.

 
1. As your present system now stands what is the TOTAL data contents on your HDD?
2. You state your have an "external hard drive". I assume you're referring to a USB external HDD, right? What is the disk-space capacity of that USBEHD and does that device contain data on it, i.e., data that you need? If so, what's the total data contents on that USBEHD?

 


uhh I have maybe 300gb but I only need to save the factory image which is 15 gb. My external usb hdd has 1tb but it has stuff on it(there is space free though). I ordered a 16gb flash drive to save the factory image but I'm afraid of it corrupting or crashing
 



Thanks for the response

Why use Redo if the pc has a built in software?
 
Few things as the said.

1) Make a backup. I perfer Macrium Reflect but that is just me. You can't just boot it off a USB drive though it must be imaged or connected to a SATA port or hard drive.

2) If you just want to copy your data off and the programs are meaningless to you and don't care to have it back exactly the way it was just save your stuff then use the Windows 8 Media creation tool here

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/create-reset-refresh-media

and boot off of it, reinstall windows, it should activate automaticlly, and you are good to go.
 
Solution
There's another option you should consider that may be a more practical one in your situation.

I realize your insistence on creating a "factory image" re your laptop's system but at least consider another option along the following lines. Rather than creating a disk image of your system, create a clone of your laptop's HDD. Now this will be practical under the following circumstances...
There is available disk-space capacity on your USB external HDD to contain the total cloned contents of your laptop's HDD. You indicated there is "free space" available on the external HDD but did not state how much. Since your external HDD has a 1 TB capacity, hopefully there would be sufficient available disk-space for the cloned contents.

So, as an example, let's say the total data contents on your laptop's HDD is 85 GB, and your 1 TB external HDD currently contains 650 GB of data, thus there's available more than 300 GB to contain data.

In that situation you could partition the 1 TB disk so that one partition is 800 GB to contain current data, and another partition 150 GB, sufficient in size to contain the laptop's cloned contents. (The figures are approximate; all that's critical is that a partition should be created sufficient in size to house the cloned contents of the laptop's HDD).

So the process would be to use a disk-cloning program (see...http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx as an example of such a program) to clone the ENTIRE contents on your Samsung laptop to the appropriate partition you created on your external HDD.

Once that is accomplished you can do whatever you want to your laptop's disk in terms of installing a new OS or other manipulations of the laptop's drive. So if & when the time came that you now desired to resurrect the old system on the laptop, it would be a relatively simple matter to clone the contents of the data contained in the USBEHD's partition that contains the cloned contents of the laptop's original system back to the laptop's HDD.

Another advantage is that during the time you're manipulating the laptop's system the complete data contents of the original system would be instantly available to you as they reside on the USBEHD in the event you want to access certain data.

Show the above to your father and see what he thinks.