What is the difference between system repair disc and bootable USB?

[Pooua]

I have various Windows 7 OSes installed on various computers. I just created a system image and have the option to create a system repair disc on either a CD or DVD. However, I know from my experiment yesterday on a different computer that I can access my system image using my bootable USB stick. I would rather use a USB stick over a DVD, because I don't have a good filing system for optical media at the moment. What is the difference between using the bootable USB stick to restore my system image and using a repair disc? Also, what is the difference between a repair disc and a recovery disc?

Thank you.

 

[Britton30]

A w7 recovery disk allows a non-booting system to access the Advanced Options screen for start up repair, Repair install, etc. It won't restore an image. Repair disk can refer to a number of things, what imaging software did you use?
what is on the bootable USB?

 

[Pooua]

I'm using just the free tools in Windows 7. I created the system image from the option to create a system image in Backup and Restore. At the conclusion of creating the system image, the system asked me if I wanted to create a system repair disc, either CD or DVD. The system image is on an external hard drive, but that is not an option for the system repair disc.

Likewise, I created a bootable USB flash drive using Windows 7 USB DVD Download tool, which has the option of creating a bootable USB flash drive. It prompts the user to point to a suitable ISO. I used Windows 7 Premium 32-bit as my ISO for creating the bootable USB flash drive. Booting from this drive prompts me to install windows, or repair my computer. I have the option of restoring from a system image, and I think it is through the repair option. At that point, I can select the system image if it is located on an attached drive.