Created 8.1 Recovery Drive but it won't boot

My PC originally had Windows 7 x64. When Windows 8 was released it was upgraded thru special offers to Windows 8 with Media Center and since then was upgraded thru the store to 8.1. Its been running fine for a few weeks. In the interest of being prepared
for an emergency, today I created recovery media. In the past my Windows 8 repair disk came in handy, so I was sorry to find that you can't burn a repair disk for 8.1. Therefore I produced several usb recovery drives using card readers with flash cards and
thumb drives. No errors were reported during the recovery drive creation process for any of these media. However booting from any of them fails. The system starts to boot, displays the Windows logo and spinning dots, then BSOD and restart.  :(

That's disturbing.
It seems to me the only way to have at least some disaster preparedness is to boot from the Windows 8 disc.  You'll need to load the specific drivers you'll need for your system to get out of the starting blocks and restore your backups. 
I keep those drivers (e.g.,, for my RAID card) on the backup drives in easy-to-find root directories.
I haven't tried it myself, as I have a Windows 8.1 disc, but I have heard you can boot up a Windows 8 (.0) disc and restore an 8.1 system using that.  Therefore it's possible one of your System Recovery Discs you made can still help you.
But the current system facilitating making bootable media on USB only?  How silly is that?
That reminds me, I need to try to see if a bootable USB external hard drive can be made.
-Noel
Detailed how-to in my eBooks:  
Configure The Windows 7 "To Work" Options
Configure The Windows 8 "To Work" Options

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