Do I need the recovery partition ?

[Magnum]

My Compaq computer has a recovery partition and I don't have an install disk for the Home Edition.

Since I make image backups on a separate drive, do I really need that recovery partition?

If my primary drive died, could I just throw in another drive and install the image to it and be good to go ?

[dedndave]

they use about 7 gB, usually
i like having the info backed up, so i put it on all my drives
but, you could make 2 copies on CD and have it pretty safely backed up
after i have removed all the bloatware, i have it down to about 3 gB   :P

normally, these are NTFS partitions that are typed as something else
i use MBRWizard to alter the type ID byte to 7
i prefer the old command-line version, although slight bug - you always have to include the "h" for hex
you might like the newer one
http://mbrwizard.com//download.php

don't forget what the original type was - lol - jot it down on a piece of paper or something
you may have a small program that resets the type ID on boot
for example, i have a program named
C:\WINDOWS\SONYSYS\VAIO Recovery\partseal.exe
if i do an application recovery from the control panel - it temporarily mounts the partition and then resets it
if i want to monkey with the OEM partition, i rename that EXE

[hutch--]

Andy,

If you don't have the original Compaq disk, get rid of the extra partition and do a clean install on the boot drive. There is some wisdom in partitioning a single hard disk and putting a copy of a disk image on the second or later partition so that if you get a virus or trojan you can just overwrite the boot partition with the image. You usually need a bootable CD to do this but it makes disasters a 5 minute to fix problem. Acronis is good, the free version of it from Seagate works OK and it will save you a lot of hassle if you have problems.

[Magnum]

Thanks gentlemen for the good info.

I use Macrium's Reflect and a Bart P.E. disk for restorations.

I will delete the restore partition.