See also my related question.
Background: I have a refurbished (newly bought) laptop with Windows 10 on it. I would like to wipe it but be able to restore original factory state later. Partitioning looks as follows:
- 100 MB boot sector
- many gigs (~100) for Windows
- 2 gigs for recovery partition.
I don't care about my own data (even better if I get a "clean" copy), I just want to be able to restore factory settings.
Options I have considered so far:
- Block-by-block copy. This is seemingly a bad idea.
- As suggested in the above answer, use special cloning software (probably the best solution, but maybe overkill?)
- Use the system backup feature built into Windows. This asks for a 16GB pen drive. I am not sure if it will be able to restore everything from that backup? (Including the boot and recovery partitions?)
- I thought about wiping everything and just leaving the recovery partition, but I read that (probably here on SO) that it is not enough for recovering everything. Also that would make partitioning of the disk trickier as it takes up the last "primary" partition.
- Don't make any backups at all, just download Windows 10 again if needed, and use the activation key I got when I purchased the laptop. (But will this restore all the three partitions?)
Also, related to the last point (downloading and installing Windows again): what would I lose with this solution? (I'm thinking this must be viable, because I almost bought another laptop, which did NOT have Windows preinstalled, just the key, and if I could install it for myself if needed. But I guess that would not create a recovery partition...)
Questions
- Most important: is there an optimal solution for this case?
- If I use Windows system backup, what will I lose?
- Is it true that the recovery partition alone is not enough for restoring everything?
- What would I lose by downloading a fresh copy of Windows, and installing from scratch?