Windows 8 recovery confusion

I was hoping someone could clear up some confusion I'm having about the various recovery options/partitions in Windows 8.1, which countless internet searches are not clarifying much.

I installed an OEM version of Win8.0 onto a new SSD by copying the recovery partition on the factory HDD to a USB drive through Windows (Recovery > Create a recovery drive > Copy the recovery partition from the PC to the recovery drive). I then booted to that USB drive and installed the factory Win8 image on the new SSD. I then updated to Win8.1 (through the MS store).

There are now four partitions on the SSD -- the primary system partition, the EFI System partition and two "recovery" partitions, one at 1000MB and one at 350MB. Neither of the recovery partitions seem large enough to actually have any meaningful recovery files in them so why are there two of them? In the "optimize drives" tool, one is labeled WINRE_DRV, the other has some obscure \\?\Volume{...} label.

Without any apparently working recovery partition or installation media, how do I now create a recovery drive on a USB stick that I can use to refresh, repair or reinstall Win8.1 if necessary? The last thing I want to do is have to potentially roll back tot he original Win8.0 factory image. I have already created a system image of the new Win8.1 installation, so presumably I can use this as the install.WIM file, or will this give me endless errors if I try to use it to refresh Windows?

 

The 350MB Recovery partition toward the front (hopefully, and should be) the fail over partition, that is, if Windows chokes at boot up it will call for recovery options.
The second at the very end should be the recovery image. I think you are correct that it would be too small to have an functional recovery image inside. Check the factory HDD and see what size it is if it is still there.

We'll have to go from there.

 

If you have the image, don't you just need to "create a recovery drive"? Just type that in the search. With Win8.1 you'll be forced to save this to a USB drive (not sure what that's about).

I went through a very similar procedure as you, transferring Win8 to SSD then upgrading to Win8.1... I would love to know why I have all these strange partitions. The SSD is split into Disk 0 and Disk 1.. then partitioned as follows:

Disk 0: 900MB Recovery Partition, 100MB EFI System Partition, OS (C) 117.8GB Boot, Page File, Crash Dump, Primary Partition, 350MB Recovery Partition

Disk 1: Recovery (F) 7.48GB FAT32

The Win8.1 backup image feature doesn't work for me - I get the same errors many people are getting and MS isn't responding to. I did however make the recovery USB drive without issue.

Like you, I would prefer to not recover back to Win8 in the future - I really would like Win8.1 features to be functional. Seems pretty broken. Even my Win8 backup is likely bad because it kept repeatedly asking me to burn and re-burn "Disc 1". Presumably there were discs that were supposed to come after 1, and I don't have them. So right now I think I'd be toast if this computer crashed. I should have followed my instinct and bought Win7.