It's amazing how little information is out there about the inner workings of what is probably the most commonly used tool for Windows recovery. I found a Microsoft Engineering article which discussed the rationale behind it, but didn't go into the nitty gritty. What I gleaned from it is that the "Reset your PC" function simply formats the existing Windows partition, it doesn't delete it and recreate it using a saved table size. So I bit the bullet and tried it - worst case scenario I have to start all over again and recopy the dead HDD's C: drive back to the SSD (which had to run overnight because of the disk errors). Well, it worked, and I now have a factory fresh image on my smaller SSD, contrary to what every other article out there was telling me.
The original HDD developed a physical problem in the Windows partition. All 5 of the other partitions were fine, so I cloned them to another drive using Macrium Reflect, then manually created an empty NTFS primary partition for Windows. I was able to access the HDD's C: drive and copy what I could over to the SDD's C: drive with a bunch of read errors. Windows 8 boots and runs now, but it's not "clean" and I want to reload the factory image.   I don't see any Dell specific programs under Windows to do this. I also don't see any Dell specific options under "Troubleshoot" or "Advanced Options", just the standard ones. I thought there was supposed to be one called "Dell Backup and Recovery"? If I simply choose "Reset your PC", will that load the full Dell image, or does it only load a standard Microsoft OEM image and then I need to separately install the Dell drivers and software?
Help restore Inspiron 15-5547 to factory Dell Win 8 image