How do I create a Win 8.1 recovery USB for the SP1?

[lparsons21]

After going through the hassle of re-initializing my SP1, I hope to never have to do it again. BUT, it seems that may occur sometime later along the line.

I've got my SP1 running W8.1 right now, but I know the darned recovery partition still has Win 8.0 on it. I could create a USB stick for that easily, but I really want a USB stick with Windows 8.1 recovery on it so I could start a re-init with Win 8.1 and not Win 8.0

Is that possible?

And if so, how about some easy instructions from an old guy (I'm 70) that is just coming back to Windows after 10 years with Macs??

Thanks.

 

[Metalman]

After going through the hassle of re-initializing my SP1, I hope to never have to do it again. BUT, it seems that may occur sometime later along the line.

I've got my SP1 running W8.1 right now, but I know the darned recovery partition still has Win 8.0 on it. I could create a USB stick for that easily, but I really want a USB stick with Windows 8.1 recovery on it so I could start a re-init with Win 8.1 and not Win 8.0

Is that possible?

And if so, how about some easy instructions from an old guy (I'm 70) that is just coming back to Windows after 10 years with Macs??

Thanks.

You can use a program like Acronis to make an image of your surface to an external hard drive.
I did that after I updated to 8.1 before I installed my programs, and then again after I installed and setup all my programs.

 

[lparsons21]

So an image of the HD instead of a 'recovery' setup?

I have Western Digitals version of Acronis, I"ll have to do some reading on it a bit to see if it will do that.

Sounds like I'll need either another external HD or a USB stick bigger than 16Gb.

Thanks

 

[lparsons21]

You can use a program like Acronis to make an image of your surface to an external hard drive.
I did that after I updated to 8.1 before I installed my programs, and then again after I installed and setup all my programs.

I'm making another backup of my HP machine now with Acronis.

For the Surface Pro, I can do the same thing later today.

Will Acronis allow for creation of a bootable USB stick or just a DVD/CD? That's rather important as I don't have an external DVD unit except for my Apple one and the SP doesn't like that one at all.

 

[Metalman]

I'm making another backup of my HP machine now with Acronis.

For the Surface Pro, I can do the same thing later today.

Will Acronis allow for creation of a bootable USB stick or just a DVD/CD? That's rather important as I don't have an external DVD unit except for my Apple one and the SP doesn't like that one at all.

I have only used an external DVD to boot from.
I have now installed Acronis, I have Acronis 2014.
I got tried booting from the DVD, I didn’t like how long it took the make the image.
I don’t think it uses the USB 3.0 speed like it does in Windows.

 

[lparsons21]

I made the image to the WD USB 3 drive and then made a bootable USB stick. All of that went pretty quick.

I haven't done an actual restore yet, but checked out the booting and seeing the image. The first thing I found out was that I had to turn off secure boot in order to do it. No big deal.