How easy is it to revert back toW8.1 after W10 upgrade?

Many free or open source backup utilities including AOMEI backup has the capability to check the image file generated for errors or corruption.

road-runner wrote:
... The only qualifier I'll make about Reflect is that I haven't done a restore yet, so for all I know the backup file is blank (been there before!), so I'm running on faith that it will work when I need it.

You can use the "Explore image" feature of Macrium Reflect to browse the backup image to see what got backed up.

strollin wrote:

Try Macrium Reflect. It's free and pretty easy to use.

THANK YOU for this recommendation. After fighting with the built-in win7 backup/restore, for hours, to restore a system image last week, this utility is a breath of fresh air. By comparison, IMO, the win 7 built-in backup/restore feels like a toy designed by toddlers.

For more detail, the windows backup/restore offers few options and gives little real-time feedback. It's kind of like the utility saying to you "Run me and don't ask any questions, I know better than you do." Of the options that are there, it's not intuitive for me which to choose. If you renamed a backup to preserve prior versions, it has to be changed to the exact correct name before restoring. If the drive letter of the backup volume changed, not so unusual with USB drives, restore won't find it. Macrium Reflect is almost an opposite. It has lots of options that are intuitive to select. The UI is much easier to use. You can save multiple backup versions and find them on any volume in any directory. The bootable rescue disc software is far superior. Image backups can be compressed, taking (in my case) half the space as the win 7 backups. Files can be accessed individually from an image backup. In the past I used Acronis and liked it. When I changed a system from xp to win 7 the Acronis version I had didn't work. I tried their new version and it was "improved" to become a complicated beast and I switched over to the windows built-in backup. The only qualifier I'll make about Reflect is that I haven't done a restore yet, so for all I know the backup file is blank (been there before!), so I'm running on faith that it will work when I need it.

Bill.Satellite wrote:
To the OP's original question, I just reverted from Win10 back to Win 8.1. As mentioned previously it's under the settings option and clicking on the revert back to 8.1 option took less than 5 minutes and everything is working just fine. I actually thought I liked Win10 quite a bit but I was having a couple of minor issues so I thought I would go back and see if they were related to the update. It turns out the Win10 was slowing down my browsing and I had not even noticed until I returned to 8.1. Going back also resolved the issues I was having so I will be staying with 8.1 for the near future. Just had to go in and hide the Win10 update in the Windows update page.

If you want to stay on 8.1 and avoid 10, uninstall if already have, and / or avoid and hide these "updates":
KB3035583 -- Nagware for Windows 10
KB2952664 -- Nagware for Windows 10
KB2976978 -- Nagware for Windows 10
KB3013816
KB3044374
KB3068708 -- Diagnostic Tracking Service

Also, I found in "Optional" updates, the Win 10 update was already checked and would have downloaded if I had not caught it. If you don't want Win 10, you have to be careful to avoid it, as Mickeysoft is and will continue to try to force it upon us.

To the OP's original question, I just reverted from Win10 back to Win 8.1. As mentioned previously it's under the settings option and clicking on the revert back to 8.1 option took less than 5 minutes and everything is working just fine. I actually thought I liked Win10 quite a bit but I was having a couple of minor issues so I thought I would go back and see if they were related to the update. It turns out the Win10 was slowing down my browsing and I had not even noticed until I returned to 8.1. Going back also resolved the issues I was having so I will be staying with 8.1 for the near future. Just had to go in and hide the Win10 update in the Windows update page.

APT wrote:
Skip the image for restoring. Just buy me. Keep the old drive for data storage.

Unfortunately, buying an ssd won't make things particularly easy because you can't do a clean install of Win 10. You would need to first clone the original drive to the ssd, then remove the original drive, install the ssd in it's place, then do the upgrade. Afterwards, if you didn't like Win 10, you could re-install the original drive.

So, even with the ssd, you would still not be able to skip the image.

Skip the image for restoring. Just buy me. Keep the old drive for data storage.

Regarding using a system image to go back to 8.1.
I did a clean installation of Win 10 from the ISO file. That removes all of Win 8.1. Win 10 would not allow me to activate - it said their server blocked activation. After a lot of research and questions on several Windows forums I gave up and decided to use the system image to go back to Win 8.1. When I tried to use it to revert to Win 8.1, Win 10 would not allow it. Said something about the partitions were not the same on this computer.

I have now obtained recovery discs from Lenovo (6 each) have Win 8.1 back up and running and am in the process of reinstalling software and setting everything back up - a time consuming recess.
So if you are doing a clean install, a win 8.1 system image install may pose a problem.

Buy another HD, they're cheap. Mirror your current Win 8.1 drive to it. Upgrade to Win 10. If you don't like it just swap the drives and reboot and you're back to Win 8.1.

I did this on mine with Win 7. Tried 10 for bit and saw no benefit and a ton of worthless 'features'. Swapped my drives back and good to go.

To mirror the drive I used a USB to SATA cable adapter from Apricorn. Other adapters will work or can use a desktop PC to plug both drives in to mirror. If buying a Western Digital drive then they have a free mirroring program to download.

Install to a $50 SSD. If you don't like it, switch boot order back