HP Recovery partiton.

[Panama Red]

I just spent some time optimizing 2 brand new HP machines for friends. Something HP does that's a little goofy, IMO, they don't furnish any recovery disc(s) with a new system. Instead, they partition a 4.5Gb FAT32 area of the hdd in front of the C drive and designate it as "recovery". Then they recommend you make your own recovery disks. All will fit on one DVD, which comes with the unit if you get one with DVD burner. Or it takes 6 CD's, which you have to buy. My question is this. If I make the Recovery DVD and XP has the "Restore" feature to allow going back to a stable operating time, why do I need to keep the recovery partiton? Seems like that space could be reclaimed for other hdd use. I'd probably use Patition Magic instead of XP Disk Management tho. Wha-da-ya-think?

[bailey]

I think its a great idea, as long as you cam make sure that you get all the drivers the system may need. once you have made the cd's you don't need that partitionn anymore, unless they put some other system stuff in there for the bios or whatever.

[glc]

I'd use Ghost or Drive Image to make images on CD for a complete restore. The HP restore will wipe your data and all your after-the-fact installed programs.

[Panama Red]

Thanx guys. I have a copy of Ghost. Sounds like a plan.