Today's Windows Secrets has a good not-too-technical but useful article on
Mastering Windows 8’s backup/restore system
It doesn't differentiate between 8.0 and 8.1 so far as I could see but I'd guess it's dealing with the later version.
It includes this interesting bit which I'd not heard about:
<< Customized system recovery images: Win8's built-in Recimg.exe tool (Recimg, for short) is a command-line option that creates custom system images (see Figure 4). When needed, custom images can return Win8 to a user's specific configuration — including all applications installed when the custom image was made (not just native Win8 apps). For detailed instructions, see the Oct. 10, 2013, Top Story, "Creating customized recovery images for Win8." >>
I've no experience of doing command line stuff like that but having just done a Refresh on my Windows 8.1Update and (knowingly) lost my applications (only a few) it's certainly interesting to know about.
I've not had time to follow the link to the further article.