Backup and Recovery

I have a the Dell 15R SE 7520 which came preloaded with windows 8 . Recently I upgraded to windows 8.1 . My questions are -
1. What should I create - a rescue disk or a recovery disk ?
2. If I create a recovery disk, will it help to recover my windows 8.1(not windows 8) in case my OS gets corrupted .
3. I also couldn't find the product key for my OS. So , If someday I have to repair my laptop using my recovery disk ,it will not stay genuine?
Any help will be appreciated. Thanks.
P.S : Please bear me , I'm new to this forum.

My advice would be to get Macrium Reflect 5.2 Free. Even the free version can download WinPE 5.0 now. You can make a boot USB or CD and save an image of the system as it is now with all the programs installed. Also it supports UEFI and GPT. You don't have to study up anything. Just run it and click on the left where it says "Create an image of the partitions required to back up and restore Windows." It will do the rest.

To create the WinPE boot USB or CD you will need to download the WinPE. It does the download for you. Just be aware the size of the download may be over 370 MB. But if you have a good WiFi connection that's no big deal. Mine downloaded in about 10 minutes.

Macrium Reflect FREE Edition - Information and download

As for the built in Windows backup.. I've used 3rd party imaging programs like Macrium and EaseUS Backup.. so I'm not very familiar with the built in method.

Thank you. And about how much space will be required to create a system image file of windows 8.1. I guess an external hard drive will be better.

With Macrium you need to install the recovery boot menu.
A picture:

gabe55 said:

Thank you. And about how much space will be required to create a system image file of windows 8.1. I guess an external hard drive will be better.

Click to expand...

My last image was around 12 GBs:

OK,thank you.

Yes. Plus if you have a really nasty malware that hoses your partitions it may not be simple to boot the recovery disc and read the image off the HD that's infected. Since internal HD prices have come back down to normal, and docking stations have gotten cheaper, an alternative is to get a USB 3.0 Docking station and slide an internal HD in. I had 1/2 dozen WD drives of various sizes. 1 TB SataIII worked fine in the USB 3.0 dock plugged into USB 3.0 port. The WD Black 1 TB I got at a discount house for about $86 plus shipping.

Depending what you have in your system you might prefer ESata to USB 3.0 but I don't have direct experience with ESata. At Walmart you can get a plastic stack of drawers for around $10 to stick the internal drives in when not using them. I got a dozen anti-static bags for a few dollars. It's just a lot cheaper than buying a drive in an external case. But I was doing stuff like muxing video. So I used the drives for more than backup.

I keep my system partition pretty lean. Typically I have about 70% free space. With compression I find Macrium makes an image about 60% the used space on the HD. Most of my backup images come in at about 18 GB. If you go the Docking station route then you may find you keep most of your data that you don't need all the time on the drives you use in the dock. Main problem there is forgetting which disk has what stuff. But if you are more organized than I am you could create a small database to keep track.

Dell Windows 8 Recovery.
Windows 8 - Recovery Media in 99 Seconds - YouTube
Recovering Windows using the Dell Direct USB Key - YouTube
Dell Direct USB Key Solution - YouTube
Dell Recovery Mode - Making Recovery CD - YouTube
Factory image restore method for Windows 8 (DBRM) | Dell US