Creating a Windows 8 recovery drive help

I bought a new ASUS computer with windows 8 (upgraded to 8.1) recently and, at the same time, I also bought a copy of windows 7 because I wasn't sure I would like windows 8. I just want to eliminate some confusion and be clear on what I am doing before I do it. I believe there is an option to create a usb recovery drive. Since I don't really care for windows 8, I would like to clean the hard drive and install windows 7 but, in case there is a problem with the installation and decide not to go ahead with installing and using windows 7, I would want to be able to reinstall windows 8. My question is..... Does the recovery drive I created contain a full copy of windows 8 operating system or does it just contain essential files to repair an already installed windows 8 operating system?

 

The recovery disc/drive will contain the essential files and not the complete OS installation.

You should image or clone the drive with Win 8 already installed using a utility like AOMEI Backupper. Then, if there are problems with the Win 7 installation, you can completely restore the Win 8 installation including the OS, device drivers, installed apps, settings and any data files you might have.

 

Thank you for your advice. I downloaded AOMEI backupper onto my hard drive and will probably use it. The partition where windows 8 is on (drive C) is about 67gb large. Drive D, which is the remainder of the hard drive has nothing on it. I have a blank 16gb flash drive, which I read would be big enough to just put windows 8 on but, obviously, not big enough to clone the entire partition on. I will need to buy a 128gb flash drive. Another option I didn't think of earlier would be to install windows 7 in another partition on the same hard drive. As I don't understand computers and operating systems that well, would I be able to do that? Then, if everything goes well with windows 7, I could just delete the partition that windows 8 is on. Is that possible or would that be a problem?

 

It's good you've only got the two partitions on your "C" drive. Usually when manufacturers do their work-up on the computer before it's sold, there are several partitions. In this case, it would be best to clone the drive so that everything will be restored including all partitions and any information contained therein.

In your case, you could use System Backup (see att'd). It will backup your system drive even while files are in use and I've used AOMEI Backupper this way and know it works.

How much is actually used on your "C" drive? If you use high compression and smart sector copy, you may be able to put the backup image of Win 8 on that 16GB flash drive.

Installing Win 7 on your "D" drive after Win 8 is already installed on your "C" drive I'm not so sure about. I know that if you install Win 8 AFTER Win 7 is installed it will allow you to dual boot. You would be presented with a screen to choose which version of Windows you wanted to run on each restart. However, getting back to just one version if you decide you don't like the other, I'm at a loss to explain how to do (I do, however, know how to do this for XP).

Also, one fact to consider is if the hard drive should fail for some reason (and they DO) you would lose both OSes (unless you do backups religiously).

 

You could install Win 7 after Win 8 and it will create a dual boot. The order of installing 7 and 8 is not important, but if you should later want to remove 8 you will need guidance or it won't boot afterwards. You could remove 7 safely though.