would it work in the same way if I took my W10 recovery media from one of our laptop’s and used it to boot from on my other one which is running 8.1
If the “recovery media” is a vanilla W10 installer then it should work. If it’s something created by the laptop manufacturer then it may be tweaked for their machine / have all the OEM software bundled in and suchlike. It might well be fine, but you’re better off just getting one direct from source.
use the link provided by petec above.
I’d burn a pendrive, personally. It’s a handy thing to have. (Also, that link for MS in Australia if that matters any.) Here:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/windows10
