These have been mentioned in various posts throughout these forums. I felt them important enough that a Sticky would be helpful.

These are several sites on how to create various type of Backups or Custom Restore Points or Refresh Points for your Win 8 CP OS. We will have to see if these remain once the Win 8 RP comes out in late spring.

Check out several things:

Create Custom restore points in Win 8 CP

Control Panel File History guide

Win 8 Refresh Reset

or look into Imaging. To restore from an Image takes LESS THAN 10 MINUTES!!!!!

My belief is that the "Gold Standard" for whole disk backups is Imaging. Imaging is essentially making a complete "photo" if you will of your HD and compressing it into a single file. This file can be stored in several ways, preferable in at least 2 of these ways.
1) In a separate partition on the same PC - This is the fastest way to restore an Image.
2) On a removable HD such as an Ext HD or Network HD.
3) On optical media such as DVD's for long term storage - This is the slowest method of restoration. These DVD's should be stored off site for safety.

Many excellent third party apps are available to accomplish this vital chore. Personally, I use Acronis True Image Home v2010 and v2011 for our PC's (This is a paid app). There are also several free apps that are excellent including Macrium Reflect, EaseUS ToDo v4, and Ghost v11. Generally the free versions of Imaging apps have fewer features than the paid versions of these apps.

Each of these apps requires the user to create a Boot Disk that allows the user's PC to Boot into the Imaging app in the event the PC will not boot. This allows the user to restore a stored Image even during this catastrophic failure.

These Boot Disks allow the user to create the Image from outside Windows as well. Although most of these apps allow these Images to be created from within Windows, it is generally considered safer by many to do so from outside Windows.

These apps also allow another form of chore called Cloning. This is actually moving of your OS from one HD to another HD, say if you are moving to a bigger HD. This is a one to one, bit by bit move. It makes a great way to copy a HD to another HD. The copy is the exact same size as the original. Some use this as the backup, but I prefer Images because the Image file is very compressed so as to occupy much less space. This allows me to store many Images in the same available storage area. Basically only one clone can be stored whereas as many Images can be stored as will fit in the space.

The instructions for creating Images vary with each app so those will not be covered here. I hope this helps you decide to do this. Creating Images is easy.

JUST DO IT!

If Macrium Reflect is updated by File Hippo Updater, do you need to make a new image and rescue disc?

Good advice, medico. It is a personal view, but I, long ago, discarded the built in options for Windows 8 and earlier. I decided to put my hand in my wallet and buy an imaging program. In my case this was Acronis. It has, so far, never let me down. As you say, when all goes wrong, - usually because of self imposed misuse, you boot up with your imaging cd and go and have a cup of coffee. When you come back you are in your pre disaster OS!
The advice to make such an image, as soon as you have completed a fresh install, could be a very useful , large, sticky on any Windows forum.

P.S. Peterr2. The problem can be avoided. Presumably, you would still have your earlier program, which you can, of course, use for your old image(s). Normally, there is something available to read, regarding what has been modified in an "update" to a program. But, imo, it is worth the bother to experiment and see if the updated program does have the same functions and compatibility.
Believe it or not, but this actually occurred with an interim release of Acronis. (I believe it was the 2012 edition). It proved to be incompatible with windows 8. Luckily I had purchased it locally and was able to get my money back!

I understand that I should make the new disc and run a new image which I have done - thank you.
I had Acronis for about 10 years and agree it does the job. I have used Marcrium also.
Acronis did not work with Win 8 so I am using Win native imaging program and Macrium's free program.
Had I left the Macrium program alone I guess it would have recovered with the old disc but the update was there for reason so I upgraded all. I remember Macrium upgrading often so have to reconsider that.
Thank you for the information about the other recover or "fix " options.
At my age and health I did not choose to renew Acronis which may be an error and I may have to do eventually.
There is another consideration have yet to explore. Western Digital offers a limited Acronis program I used for my laptop and it was trustworthy. I need to see if it will work with Wim 8 so I will go to the WD forum.
Thank you again
Peter

Hello
I am sorry to pester but I have a question I forgot to ask in the post.
I image to create a point where I like my pc to be. If I create the disc and a new image, I will lose that point which was not bogged down with clutter and where I wanted it.
Because I have I have sensitive data on removable media, I am not concerned about updating it as I take care of that aside.
I have also made an image with the Windows native program ; how much faith do you put in it?
Thank you again
Peter