Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga. 254 GB SSD drive was failing so did a win8.1 system image backup onto external drive (60GB image done pretty quick). Lenovo tech replace same size SSD hard drive. Got a copy of Windows 8.1 DVD and external DVD drive. boot to DVD
and
1. select "repair your computer option"
2. Troubleshoot
3. advance options
4. System Image Recovery
5. Chose "Windows 8.1" for target operating system (only selection)
6. finds system image on external drive
7 next screen show additional restore options keep default and click Next
got error message: No disk that can be used for recovering the system disk can be found.... error code 0x80042412
spent 5 hours troubleshooting error, MS forums, Mr Google. fooled around with bios uefi settings, diskpart commands. Also use diskpart to format the drive and tried to restore disk image without success. Thought my system image backup was corrupt, thinking
I probably have to reinstall from scratch and restore data manually from failing drive. (which the tech already took back with him)
found one link that solve many users exact error
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-system/no-disk-that-can-be-used-for-recovering-the-system/e855ee43-186d-4200-a032-23d214d3d524?page=1&tm=1410330387893
tried the fix from below.
I finally just got it working. Trying to go from a 500gb drive to another 500gb drive and getting the same error. I went into Diskpart and type "select disk=0". Then I type "detail disk" to make sure I had the right drive. I typed "Clean", and then "exit"
to get out of Diskpart. And then I started the image recovery and finally it works. Before I did these commands I had formatted the drive to one large partition, set the partition to active, and made sure it had a drive letter assigned.
this did not fix the problem still got same error message. almost 1AM and about to give up...
decided to Boot to DVD again and start a fresh install of Win 8.1
came to part where it asks you to format hard disk. I deleted all partitions and create one whole partitions, windows create 3 additional partitions for recovery, system and etc. the 4th partition had the biggest size. 238 GB. so I formatted this partition.
click next to start Win 8.1 install but cancelled it right away. (could of restarted the computer after the formatting was done) All I wanted to do was format the drive.
Sames step as earlier...
boot to DVD and
1. select "repair your computer option"
2. Troubleshoot
3. advance options
4. System Image Recovery
5. Chose "Windows 8.1" for target operating system (only selection)
6. finds system image on external drive
7 next screen show additional restore options keep default and click Next
VOILAA!! system image ran through completely (didn't time it but went pretty quick)
System restored!
formatting the hard drive during the Fresh Windows installed made it work!!?. not sure why but it did.
=) sleeping happy tonight. returning laptop to client first thing in the morning.
hope this post saves someone 5hrs.