Is HP recovery media creation tool a thing of the past?

[Ian32uk]

Hi, I have just purchased a new HP laptop, & have in the past, always used HP's  recovery media creation tool to create a set of recovery DVD's.

Please can someone tell me, is the HP recovery media creation tool a thing of the past now, & no longer used/available?

My new laptop has no DVD drive, so I used a USB stick to create a Microsoft Windows 10 USB drive. Is this the same/similar thing?

Many thanks for your time.

Ian. 

[banhien · Accepted solution]

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@Ian32uk wrote:

... My new laptop has no DVD drive, so I used a USB stick to create a Microsoft Windows 10 USB drive. Is this the same/similar thing?

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@Ian32uk 

For original Windows 10 machines, you can use Cloud Recovery tool:

             https://support.hp.com/au-en/document/c06162205

Yes, not the same but similar thing with few differences

• From Microsoft, you get up-to-date Windows - From HP, you get Windows from the factory day could be few your old depending on its ages
• From Microsoft, you have to install drivers yourself - From HP, the recovery tool installs OLD drivers for you and you still have to find and update drivers.
• For Windows 10 update from older Windows, you have to use Microsoft tool - HP tool give you back to Factory settings, what ever Windows it was.

Could be few other minor differences.

Hope this helps

Regards.

[WAWood]

@Ian32uk 

The answer to your question is -- yes and no.  Yes -- because the "recovery" tool does do a complete reinstall of Windows on the PC.  But no -- because the HP image would reinstall the HP apps and drivers; the MS image will do neither.

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I personally prefer to use third-party Backup solutions as they tend to be both more flexible and more reliable than any built-in solutions.

Macrium Reflect (MR) provides a FREE version that can be used to image and restore partitions or entire drives.

What I recommend is the following:
1) Download and install Macrium Reflect (MR) from here: http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx
2) Run MR and choose the option: "Create an image of the partition(s) required to backup and restore Windows" to write a full backup to an external drive or USB stick
3) Use the option to create a boot USB stick or CD

My experience is that MR, when using the High Compression option, typically can compress the saved image file to about 60% of the USED space in the OS partition. This means if you have an 80GB OS partition, and 40GB is used, MR only needs about 24GB to store the image file.

I use this all the time and it typically takes less than 15 minutes to do the image backup and about the same time or less to do a restore.

Plus, MR has the option to Add a Recovery Boot Menu entry. This allows you then to boot into WinRE, and you can then use that to do a restore -- when you can't boot into Windows!

NOW, you have the means to restore a full working system from the external drive or USB stick in only a few minutes.