Feb 06, 2013 If the HP Recovery media do not work. Together with a blank WIndows 8 DVD to create the same exact factory. Recovery Drive - Create.

MediaHp Recovery Media Creator Windows 8

Hi, Andrew: I was wondering the same thing, and came across this link and successfully made a system image of my current W8.1 installation on a USB portable hard drive. I imagine you can just use the W8 DVD to boot from, and launch the repair menu to get to the image, or you can use a 512 MB flash drive and create a bootable W8.1 repair menu.

Windows 8 Recovery Media Download

I would not rely on accessing the recovery menu from Windows. The nice thing about this method is you can keep updating your system image and keep it current. It will overwrite the existing image.