Recovery Image

I have now created a new Recovery Image after having upgraded to Windows 8.1 saved to a folder on the c: drive.

I have a factory installed recovery image for Windows 8.0 on a separate partition on the hard drive and now have several questions.

Based on an earlier post at http://www.windowsbbs.com/windows-8/107152-recovery-image.html I want to keep both.

My questions:

Can I have to recovery partitions on the hard drive and if so, how do I create one and copy the new image to it?

If I then have to recover, how does the computer know which one to use?

How can I create a bootable USB drive with the new image on it? The best I can find would appear to be set up to copy the old one only.

 

OR, if you have a second "physical" drive (not a partition on the same drive) you can save your backups there. This is what I do frequently with my Documents folder so if my data drive fails, I can quickly recover. But that is NOT a very robust backup policy. A direct lightning strike, tornado, fire, flood, or thief could take out your entire computer (and both drives and all backups of your data with them).

So I also backup to an old XP system that has been repurposed as a NAS hanging off my network in a different part of the house. Finally, I keep another backup off-site so if a tornado blows my house away, I can still recover. Obviously, it takes some discipline and time to keeps these off-site backups as current as possible. Like most insurance policies, you hope you never really need it. But if you do need it, you hope you have a really good policy. Off-site is the way to ensure (insure? ) it.

I recommend EVERYONE keep an off-site backup of any data you don't want to lose. Off-site can be a "trusted" neighbor's or family member's house, a safe deposit box at your bank, or in your drawer at work. Of, if you trust "the cloud ", you can backup to there (and then retrieve from anywhere - a big plus).

So I agree 100% - saving to some external media is the best advice.

For the record, the nearly 25 years of personal data files (personal, school and work papers, tax records, password safe, photos, software license keys, emails, etc.) are worth much more to me than all my hardware, operating systems and programs. I can easily buy more hardware, reinstall Windows and my programs. But recovering lost personal files is impossible without a good backup.