A disk image does not gain much, unless I am going to repeatably cycle thru 'try to fix and restore if it fails'.
That is not a useful method because of the time constraints.
The only important thing on the drive is the data.
If it does not fix quickly it will be restored from Recovery Partition.
There is a last resort route of installing from a win8 dvd but that should not be needed if the Recovery works.
The recovery will be 80% there and the Proggies can be re-installed while the data can be put back from the copy.
If I had the drive I would be able to get back from the Win10 wreck with a little effort and as much time as I needed.
I am trying to do the fastest and safest process ..... fast does not help and remotely compounds that.
For your information: I have recovered Windows of every version crashing & burning many many times (and that is just on my own machines
)
Most of the time everything is there but something goes west in the booting process.
Convincing Windows that what it thinks is 'wrong' is the problem. [Another example of MS knowing best
]