The terminology may be confusing at first. The reset option basically removes all personal data from the PC before reinstalling Windows 8 on the computer system, refresh on the other hand restores some data on the system after reinstallation of the operating system.

Microsoft details both troubleshooting and repair options in a new blog post on the Building Windows 8 site.

Both options are available in the Windows 8 control panel. The Reset your PC screen looks like this:

Windows performs several operations when the reset option is selected. The PC is booted into the Windows Recovery Environment, data on the Windows partition is erased, and the hard drive formatted which means that all personal data on that particular partition will become unavailable. A new copy of Windows 8 is then installed, which is then loaded once the PC restarts.

A refresh on the other hand preserves some of the personal data that is already on the PC. The process is nearly identical to resetting the PC. The only difference is that Windows 8 backs up data, settings and metro apps on the same drive to restore the data after Windows 8 has been reinstalled on the computer system. Windows 8 will only preserver Metro style apps, and not desktop applications which may seriously increase the the configuration and setup time after the refresh has been completed.

Microsoft mentions two reasons for this behavior:

First, in many cases there is a single desktop app that is causing the problems that lead to a need to perform this sort of maintenance, but identifying this root cause is not usually possible. And second, we do not want to inadvertently reinstall “bad” apps that were installed unintentionally or that hitched a ride on something good but left no trace of how they were installed.

System configuration settings that will be preserved include the PCs wireless network connections, mobile broadband connections, drive letter assignments, personalization settings like the desktop wallpaper and Bitlocker settings.

Some settings will not be restored though “as they can occasionally cause problems if misconfigured”. This includes display settings, Windows Firewall settings as well as file type associations.

Windows 8 does ship with options to define your own baseline image for refreshing operations. The core benefit here is that this makes it possible to restore desktop applications as well.

Here is how this works: Configure Windows 8 the way you want it to be. Install applications and make changes to the system. Once you are satisfied you run the following commands on an elevated command line prompt to create the baseline image.

• mkdir C:\RefreshImage
• recimg -CreateImage C:\RefreshImage

You can naturally place the image into another directory, for instance on another partition or drive. Windows will automatically register that baseline image for use when the refresh option is selected by the user.

Microsoft has tested the resetting option on the developer preview PC that they handed out at the BUILD conference. A quick reset of the Windows 8 PC took 6 minutes and 12 seconds to complete, a more thorough reset with BitLocker enabled 6 minutes and 21 seconds, and a thorough reset without BitLocker 23 minutes and 52 seconds. Why the big difference between PCs with BitLocker enabled and disabled? Microsoft is only erasing the encrypted metadata on BitLocker enabled devices which takes significantly less time than erasing all data on the drive. A refresh of the PC took 8 minutes and 22 seconds.

Windows 8 Reset, Refresh FAQ

• Can data be recovered after a reset? This depends. Microsoft mentioned that they will provide options in Windows 8 Beta to erase data more thoroughly to limit the effectiveness of data recovery attempts. The thorough option will overwrite every sector of the partition with random data.
• Reset, Refresh and System Restore: System Restore serves a different purpose. It is mainly used to undo a single change on the system, for instance the installation of a new system driver that is causing issues on the system.
• What can I do if the PC does not boot into Windows 8 anymore? Both refresh and reset options are available when booting into the Recovery Environment.

Here is a video demonstrating the refresh and reset functionality.

You find more information about Windows 8 Reset and Refresh at the Windows 8 News site.

CD/DVD/Blu-Ray Recovery is a free recovery software for Windows that can do exactly that. Don’t expect the program to do wonders though. It tries to copy all files located on an optical drive like a CD or DVD drive to the computer system. Only one source folder and multiple file names can be added to the recovery queue. Files and folders are displayed under the source folder or file name listing at the top of the program interface.

The program itself is pretty easy to use. You need to install it after you have downloaded the setup file. Skip the request to (freely) register the program. A click on Add Folder and the selection of a connected optical drive adds this drive to the recovery queue.

You can furthermore change the output folder or copying speed. Copying speed ranges from fastest, with less chances to recover unreadable or partially readable files, to slowest, which offers the best chance of recovering the selected contents.

A click on Start begins the recovery process. CD DVD Blu-Ray Recovery tries to read and copy all contents to the local hard drive. A log next to the start button indicates the process. Files that have been copied successfully are displayed as OK next to their file name.

The program is not as sophisticated as comparable recovery solutions. There is for instance no option to set the number of read retries, or to compare files on CD, DVD or Blu-Ray with the files copied to the hard drive. It is possible to use third party tools like File Check MD5 for that purpose.

Still, CD/DVD/BlueRay Recovery is easy to use and worth a try. Users who need more configuration options should look under related articles where additional recovery programs are linked.

Instructions and downloads are provided at the developer website. The program worked fine under Windows 7. It should run fine on other Microsoft operating systems.

Update:

I have been notified that Martik does not appear to be the rightful owner of the program. As a consequence, I have removed the link to the program from the article. The issue can be further discussed on the Portable Freeware website or here in the comments.

I suggest you take a look at our CD DVD Data Recovery Software Overview for alternatives to recover data from optical discs.

The question that some might ask is why one could recover deleted files at all. This is actually a very good question. Windows does not delete the file at all when you press the delete button. It simply deleted the reference to that file and makes the space the file occupied writable again. This means that you can recover most files if you are just fast enough. One freeware that can do the job is Recuva which is supposed to be pronounced recover.

It is developed by the same team that created CCleaner. Recuva scans the hard drive that you have selected and displays all deleted files that it finds in a list. It found more than 60000 files on my E: drive that I could try and recover. Information like filename, path and size are displayed to make it easier to find the files that you want to recover.

Recuva has fortunately a filter option. Just enter part of the filename or path and it will display only those files. It took 53 seconds to scan my 140 GB partition and display the 60000 entries.

The article gives a 14 pages tutorial on how to create bootable windows operating system on a 256 MB usb stick. You can of course use a bigger one and add more utilities that you need (like true crypt for example). Everything is well explained, you should not encounter lots of problems.