Cloning a hard disk with Windows 8.1 using only the OS installation media

THIS POSTING COPY FROM   Panos Macheras

If you ever had the need to upgrade your old HDD with a shiny new super-fast SSD you need some way to clone your OS installation to the new drive. As I was searching the net on ways to do this I run into various bits of available software either commercial or open source. I tried using Clonezilla but even though it worked on a Windows 7 machine, it failed cloning a Windows 8.1 installation (my guess is that this is due to changes in the system partition). And then it hit me: why not just use the built-in backup/restore capabilities of Windows 8.1?
In addition to your shiny new SSD, you will also need the following:
1. One external USB hard disk to store the disk image. This has to have enough free space and you will only use a folder to store the disk image (so you don’t have to format or empty this disk if it has enough free disk space). If your disk image is small enough then you can even use a USB stick.