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My apologies in advance, it's rather long and a bit technical....
The background: My 'main computer' - with all emails and important financial information on it - used to be an ancient Compaq Deskpro EN running Windows XP. 'Bleeding Edge' I'm not...
It was, until one morning earlier this year I switched it on - and it wasn't. That's when I (re)discovered I hadn't backed up for a very long time. After much fretting in the end I went ahead with commercial disc recovery. After some time I emerged with a much lighter wallet and a little 1TB Transcend USB disc drive, with my 2GB of account data in one corner of the disc - I told them I thought it would fit on one of my USB sticks... Still, at least I now have something else to back up to.
Since then I have been using my Toshiba Win 8 notebook for browsing and webmail. On and off over the months(!) I have been meaning to get another desktop to set up as before from my recovered acount. Trouble was, a new PC meant Windows 10! OK, there are alternatives and cheaper ways of getting other versions of Windows, and I always fancied UNIX - but when I looked, things have obviously moved on since I last looked. There now appear to be more varieties of *nix than Windows application programs. I need to get sorted out soon to do my SA.
Second hand PC's are everywhere, but seem to now only come with Win 10 or Win 7. Then I found the Dell Financial Services lease site http://dellrefurbished.co.uk, they had ex lease PC's with Win 8.1 available! So I grabbed one, a dinky little Optiplex 7020.
Bearing in mind what happened with the Deskpro I thought I'd better take more care this time around. That's when I realised that I really don't have much idea what exactly is going on with 'Recovery' etc with the 'new' Dell (or the Toshiba for that matter). The only documentation with the Dell was a folded pamphlet with brief notes on it:
"My recovery disk was not included
Your refurbished system has a recovery media partition installed to facilitate reinstallation or creation of a recovery media disk.
Visit Dell.com/Support for more details on how to backup the recovery partition onto separate media."
And:
"How to reinstall the OS from the partitioned hard dive
Press the F8 key multiple times immediately after the on button is pushed
Select Repair Computer on the menu that appears
Log in and select Dell Factory Image Restore."
With Windows set up, as the Dell starts up there is a "Press F11 key for AOMEI One Key Recovery..."
Then the boot menu briefly gives two choices 'Windows 8.1 Pro' or 'AOMEI One Key Recovery'
On the Windows desktop there is a link 'DELL Recovery' - starting this shows it is indeed 'AOMEI One Key Recovery 1.6' from these people: https://www.backup-utility.com
They also do 'AOMEI Backupper' (not installed). The English leaves a bit to be desired but reviews seem quite good. (I know Macrium Reflect is the Go To program around here.)
Thing is, I realise I'm getting a bit lost in all this. The Dell has five partitions:
Recovery Partition - 100% Free
EFI System Partition - 100% Free
C: - NTFS 95% Free
AOMEI - FAT32 63% Free
AOMEI Recovery Partition - NTFS 38% Free
The Toshiba is similar with four:
Recovery Partition - 100% Free
EFI System Partition - 100% Free
Recovery Partition - 100% Free
C: - NTFS 87% Free
Questions - Firstly, why TWO 'Recovery Partitions on each machine, one a few hundred megabytes, the other ~10 gigabytes?
Secondly, as the AOMEI Recovery Partition on the Dell is 38% Free I guess it must already be occupied by the basic(?) Windows 8.1 Pro system to restore from. If I later use AOEMI One Key Recovery again to create a recovery partition, will I overwrite that existing Partition with my then current Windows setup? Strangely, the main(?) Toshiba Recovery Partition shows no file system type and as 100% Free, unlike the Dell.
I haven't found the Dell information on how to backup the recovery to another media - the free AOMEI won't do this AFAIK. Perhaps they mean use free AOMEI Backupper to do it?
Alternatively, I tried Windows 'Recovery' in Control Panel. It offered to create a Recovey Drive but NOT the "Copy the Recovery Partition from the PC to the recovery drive" option (even in Admin account) as it was grayed out. On the Win 8 Toshiba it will allow me to "Copy the Recovery Partition from the PC to the recovery drive" - There is a Toshiba 'Recovery Media Creator' program as well.
Then again, http://www.dell.com/support even has: "How to Download and Use the Dell OS Recovery Image in Microsoft Windows"
I'd really like to know how best to reliably restore the Dell to its as delivered state, if ever needed.