Hello everyone!
This post was a long time in coming. I started it last April, but got distracted with life and happiness (you know, those non-computer related things). Anyway, last April I picked up an "Ultrabook-style" laptop to serve as my daily machine (a snazzy Asus S56C). The blog post chronicles transferring the machine to a Linux-based one, and what steps I had to go through to do so as well as any Tips and Tricks I discovered along the way. Note that I was using Windows 8.0 at the time, so the newer update, 8.1, might have some of the issues I ran into fixed.
Backing up Windows 8
I knew from the beginning that this would be a dedicated Linux machine. My first impressions on trying to use Windows 8 was basically that it was a pile of insanity served in a bowl of nonsense (I'm not biased or anything I swear :)). I'm sure I could get used to Windows 8 eventually, if I had to, but I would probably do some tweaks to get a more traditional desktop feel.
But since I knew Windows wouldn't be staying, I didn't invest too much time in that. However, I felt it was important to protect my investment by making sure I had a backup of the pre-installed Windows, in case I ever needed to restore it.
Sadly, even this was more complicated them I'm used too, so I thought it prudent to start the conversion blog with some helpful tips on backing up the original system.
Recovery Discs
I'm very used to making recovery discs on older systems, in fact I encourage everybody using computers to have some sort of disaster-recovery mechanism in place (including, but not limited to, recovery discs).
Normally, these recovery disc tools are provided by the computer manufacturer. They also take the form of a "recovery partition" on your hard drive, although in my experience, you can also make recovery discs in case the partition gets removed (or corrupted). These discs usually server to restore the partition in that case.
That's all fine and dandy, but I had a hard time finding the mechanism to create recovery discs. There didn't seem to be a manufacturer provided tool, and indeed there wasn't. However, with some Googling, I found how to create a create a recover drive from within Windows 8. That's right, you don't seem to be able to use discs any more, instead you create a recovery flash drive.
To get to the tool, open your "Charms" bar (move the cursor to one of the screens four corners), and select the "Search" option (it looks like a magnifying glass). In the Search Bar, type "recovery".
You might be surprised, as I was, to find zero results. That's because things are partitioned into categories in the search results. By default, you are only searching the "Apps" category. To find the recovery drive tool, you need to search the "Settings" category. Do that by clicking the "Settings" button. Personally, I would consider the tool an "App" and not a "Setting", but what do I know? :)
Once you search for "recovery" in Settings, you should find a link called "Create a recovery drive". You'll need a minimum 16GB Flash Drive to use. Thankfully, these aren't too expensive now-a-days (around $9.99 CDN here).
After that, follow the instructions to create the recovery drive. NOTE: You sadly won't be able to boot the recovery drive without doing some additional steps, but we'll get to in Part 2.
Create a System Image
If you are familiar with Windows 7, you know that you can create a complete Windows 7 system image to restore to an alternate drive (for example, if you suffer a hard drive malfunction).
This tool still exists in Windows 8, but it's hidden in an even more obscure location. Like before, go to the search menu and type "recovery" (in the Settings category). Look for an option called "Windows 7 File Recovery". "Windows 7??", I hear you asking. Yes, Windows 7. To me, a tool called "Windows 7 File Recovery" would be some sort of tool for recovery files from Windows 7 (perhaps a backup). And, indeed, it is. But it's also where they decided to hide the System Image tool (used for Windows 8). Strange, but let's continue...
In the Windows 7 File Recovery menu, there are two links on the side:
1) Create a System Image
2) Create a System Repair Disc
We're going to use the first one.
Broken out of the box
Sadly, it turns out the System Image tool is broken out of the box. If you try to run the tool and following the instructions to put the image on DVD, you may get a rather cryptic and unhelpful error message:
"The backup failed. The drive cannot find the sector requested. (0x8007001b)."
The error is actually referring to the fact that the disc isn't formatted. You could probably manually format the disc, and it would work fine, but you'd think the too would do that for you, no?
Well, it does, as long as you install the update to fix it. Installing all the recent updates (which is a good idea before doing a System Image anyway) should repair it, or if you are the impatient type, here's a link to the Knowledge Base article which will help you download the specific patch: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2779795
After you are up to date, click the link to create the system image and follow instructions. You can choose an external hard drive, or a "one or more DVDs". I opted for the DVD option (on DVD-RW's so as to not be deleted by accident, which led to the error above). On a fresh out of the box system, it took me four DVD's. Don't forget to label them!
Create a system repair disc
Last but not least, you should probably create a System Repair disc. It seems the system image you made above is useless without a tool to load the image back onto your hard drive. The system repair disc might also come in handy for other reasons. You'll find one of the options on the system repair disc is to restore the machine from a system image. However, I won't go into those details here.
Note: TechRepublic posted an article great here which goes into far more detail on the steps than what I mentioned above. It suggests that creating a System Repair Disc and a Recovery Drive are effectively the same thing, and you probably don't need to do both. Although I find it a little strange that the Recovery Drive takes up most of a 16GB flash drive, but the System Repair Disc fits on a single DVD. Regardless, I felt more comfortable having both, so I created both.
A few other tips:
1) Feel free to check for (and install) any BIOS updates before removing Windows. There's a handy Windows-based tool for updating your BIOS, though my machine was update to date out of the box. You can probably also do the flash from within the BIOS, but I'm not 100% sure.
2) You might get bugged after a few boots to register your system. This is probably a good idea if you want your manufacture warranty.
3) You can get to the recovery partition by holding down "F9" on boot. As far as I can tell, the interface is very similar to the Repair Disc and the Recovery drive interface.
That's it for now! In Part 2, I'll show you what BIOS you need to update to boot from USB or DVD, either for restoring one of your backups (or installing Linux). All the best!
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