In Linux in general going from the iso to a bootable USB is very simple. Plug in a USB stick and make sure it is not mounted. Let's assume it is /dev/sdb. Then you just say:
sudo dd if=/path/to/iso/file of=/dev/sdb
Here follows an important disclaimer: please be careful not to invert if (= Input File) and of (Output File), it could have disastrous consequences.
If you do not know how to make sure that the (unmount) stick is /dev/sdb, you can first mount it
sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt
and then unmount it,
sudo umount /mnt
If sdb1 does not work, then the stick may be sdc1, sdd1, ...
Also note that, in the dd statement, there is no '1' after /dev/sdb. This might be /dev/sdc, /dev/sdd on the basis of what you ascertained by mounting and unmounting it, but it is not sdb1, sdc1, sdd1 (this would not have catastrophic consequences, it would just not give you a bootable disk).
When dd'ing is over, unplug your stick and you are ready to go.
Every modern windows install has recovery related things in the system partitions. Its used for stuff like refreshing your windows install, or going into the recovery console. The other two partitions are HP specific things.
Firstly, you can't simply convert recovery partitions into isos by using cat or dd. There's some other necessary things that are sitting in your bootloader.
I'm not really going to make specific recommendations for software (the one I regularly use isn't really very handy at one off backups), and I'll talk more of a process and how to set this up and what to look for than specific software recommendations.
I have two ways I typically handle this.
Make a restore image USB. Make a copy of it (dd on linux, win32 imagewriter on windows). Test restore to the USB you made a copy from, try booting to make sure it works, label the image (I typically name them Restore - so the factory restore image for my HP Stream 11 is RestoreHPStream11Blue8GBWindows8.img. There's probably a HP specific tool for this as well.
Image the whole system - Something like clonezilla or most decent imaging software would let you do a one off backup. Do it on a fresh system, test to see if it'll restore. I suppose you could tell it not to backup the OS partition and do a test restore. Create recovery media, label and store.
Did I mention testing my backups? Yes I did.
Essentially though, the backup method you've suggested may not work.
I do suspect there's a third way to do this - make backup isos if supported and use some tool to boot this. That's a bit of a if-maybe, and may work with option 2.
Best Answer
The the BIOS tries to boot from a device (flash drive, hard disk, optical drive, floppy disk, etc.), it searches for a boot sector.
From Boot sector - Wikipedia:
Just copying an
.iso
file to the flash drive won't create a boot sector, so it will not work. Likewise, you cannot simply copy all files from on hard disk to another and expect the installed OS to work. The files are there, the boot sector isn't.An ISO image is an archive. The files inside the ISO file have to get extracted or they're will be unusable.
Likewise, you cannot archive the entire content of your hard disk in a
.zip
file and keep using it.The term burning is utterly misused when talking about flash drives.
From ISO image - Wikipedia:
That means it contains all necessary files and boot sector information to make your OS boot. Traditionally, burning means writing this information to an optical disk. The laser actually burns the data on a disc's layer. When talking about flash drives, burning just means writing the data to the flash drive.