Disclosed herein are systems and method for performing recovery using a backup image. In one exemplary aspect, a method comprises scanning a plurality of files on one or more storage devices of a computing device. The method may determine a first set of files from the plurality of files that will be used during recovery of the one or more storage devices, and tag a second set of files that will not be used during recovery. The method may copy the second set of files that have been tagged to an external storage device, and may store the first set of files in a backup image for the computing device (excluding the tagged second set of files from the backup image). The method may add, to the backup image, a respective link to each of the tagged second set of files in the external storage device.