recovering windows 8 from usb drive

hi everyone

i was wondering, i have a hp windows 8 machine and it came with a recovery partition and i have since made a recovery usb drive. my big question is if i use say a windows 7 disc to wipe my entire hdd and install windows 7 could i at some point reinstall windows 8 from the usb drive or have i lost it for good?

Safest, simplest answer is to do an image backup to an external hard drive or flash drive using Macrium Reflect Free.

Install Macrium.
Create the backup image. Make sure you select all partitions needed. For windows 8 this usually means 4 of them.
Create the Macrium rescue disc/flash drive.

Play with Windows 7.

To restore Windows 8, bot the Macrium rescue disc/flash drive and restore the backup image.

One option is to buy a second hard drive and swap it for the original factory drive. Put the factory drive in the antistatic bag the new one comes in and put it in a safe place. Then you can play with any OS you want to without messing up the factory install. If the PC ever needs service or you want to return it, just swap the original drive back in again.

thanks for all the comments guys much apprecaited, managed to image my drive and tried to install windows 7 but unfortunatly i seem to have a laptop that hp build for windows 8/8.1 only so no windows 7 for me, but even worse i cannot factory reset my windows 8 as i updated to 8.1 and it killed the refresh/reset functions, and my product key wont work on this : Upgrade Windows with only a product key - Microsoft Windows Help

so i now hate hp for no install disk as none of my recovery disks as being seen as able to do the reset

Maybe this will help you get 7 installed, UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) - Install Windows 7 with - Windows 7 Help Forums

thanks but its the drivers for the laptop thats the problem once windows 7 is installed nothing really works bar the mouse, keyboard and screen not even the ethernet connection works tried loads of drivers and not one worked

OK, I took a stab in the dark at what the issue was. Some really new models don't have Windows 7 drivers as they never shipped with that OS. You'd have to look at similar models from the same manufacturer to find drivers that may work. That or go to each separate manufacturers web site. Instead of going to HP you look on RealTech, VIA, AMD, NVidia, etc depending on what hardware you can identify. It can be a lot of work.

thanks very much i do appreciate the input

You should be able to purchase the Windows 8 install disc for your computer from HP. Check the HP Support site.

HP charges about $16 for the OS and driver disc.

By the way I always order install media for new Dell computers and there is no charge and usually ships overnight.

cool thanks il get in touch with them