I do have an external hard drive but have never made an image backup. I back up all my documents and pictures once a week but have never bothered with the programs etc. That is because I have always had original disks for the OS and Office. Everything else I download and reconfigure myself. This time however, you are right... no disk for Windows 8 because it came preinstalled. Hmmm.. now to find out how to make and image backup.