New
#1
Trying to backup computer before using it, but having problems
I got me a Dell laptop and want to backup the OS and everything else to a flash drive in case of a future total failure. People have told me to use an external hard drive for the purpose because it has more room and can do repeated backups, but that's not a concern for me. I just want to do a one-time backup at the beginning. I attempted doing it last night, but my flash drive (64GB) doesn't even show up as an option to save the backup image to. It also turns out that I need to make a system recovery drive which needs 16GB. Would it be possible to just create the recovery drive on the 64GB flash drive, then after that back up the computer to its own hard drive, then copy the backup over to the remaining space in the flash drive? The current used space in the computer is about 40GB, so it would fit in the flash drive along with the system recovery, but would everything function the way it should?
I've heard that creating a recovery drive to a USB flash drive erases everything on the flash drive. So I was thinking I could create the recovery drive first, and then add the system image backup afterwards. What do you think of that?
Also, I already downloaded the Win10 .iso file from Microsoft and burned it to a DVD when I had a previous computer. I still have that DVD. Is that all I'd need if I ever had a hard drive failure?