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Thanks for reading my post, I think I know what to do next, but I'm concerned about messing something up in the final stretch after a bunch of issues, so I really appreciate any advice you have.
Background
I'm bought a Razer laptop back in 2018 for gaming and creative work and it has worked great, but it has begun to show it's age. So this past fall when I saw a sale on the 2025 version of a very similar model to the one I bought back in 2018, I snapped one up. I opened it up, loaded my files from a backup on an external hard drive, and started using it, but it had some weird issues with video/audio syncing and crashing even when doing fairly light tasks. So, I reached out to Razer, did some troubleshooting steps back and forth over email, and ultimately sent my machine to them. Right before I sent the laptop for repairs, I made a Windows Image Backup of my 2025 Razer laptop. They decided the motherboard was defective, replaced it, and sent it back to me.
Present
I decided to test the repaired 2025 Razer laptop to make sure it's not having the same problems, before restoring my files from the Windows Image Backup, and it's working as it should (hooray!) However, when I tried to restore my Windows Image Backup, I got a message in BIOS (I think that's what the blue startup menu is called?) saying that I don't have a repair disk, which I apparently should have created with a CD (I can't quite believe I have to use a CD?).
After some googling, and getting a little turned around, I think my next steps are:
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Buy an external DVD Drive and a Blank DVD
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Create a repair disk (I'm unsure if I should do that with my old 2018 Razer laptop or my new but empty 2025 Razer laptop?)
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Enter BIOS and use both my external hard drive with the Windows Image Backup and my newly bought external DVD Drive with my repair disk on the new DVD to restore my files from right before the repair.
Additional Information
+I am running Windows 11 on my 2018 and 2025 Razer laptops.
+This is for personal use.
+I have about 500GB of files, a 1TB external hard drive, and a 128GB thumb drive.
+The external hard drive is a Seagate expansion portable drive.
+I'm not totally out of the loop, but I wouldn't call myself a techie by any means (that much is probably clear by now haha)
Questions for next time
+If I'd rather not use the cloud, is the Windows Image Backup the right move, or should I use a backup method next time?
Thanks again for taking the time to read my post, I really appreciate any advice you have.