If sometime in the past you have suffered from a crash or corruption of your hard drive, you probably still have feelings of frustration about it. You had someone reinstall Windows for you, or you did it yourself, and you found that most of the programs that you were using every day were missing. You expected your data files to be gone, and you are still angry with yourself for not backing them up. You had to use another computer and go to several websites to download drivers to a cd-rw to reinstall all the devices windows didn't find. It sure seems like there should be a better way.

Well, if you own a computer manufactured by Hewlett-Packard, you can find all the "stuff" that came with your computer in one place, the Recovery Disc that shipped with your system. Contained on this disc is a complete reinstallation image of your machine that will restore it to the configuration it was in when you first received it. This disc obviously won't contain any of your data, but it makes recovery of everything else on your system very easy. Using this disc will reinstall the Windows OS, all of your device drivers, and all program files that originally shipped with your system from the factory.

It is very important to understand that your recovery disk is just for reinstallation of the operating system. It doesn't recover data in the traditional sense. You still need to regularly backup your files to prevent their loss. As I mentioned above, this restores your machine to just how it was when you first received it.

Recently, HP abandoned the use of recovery discs in favor of a partition on the hard drive that can be used to recover the machine. This was probably a cost cutting measure. Under increasing criticism from angry customers, HP has begun sending out recovery discs to customers that request it. A recovery partition is a good idea until you have to replace the hard drive, since the partition won't be on the new drive, you won't be able to recover the system without a recovery disc.

Your HP Recovery Disc should be kept in a safe place; it should be implemented in your disaster recovery program. It will give you a good jump start in restoring your machine quickly and correctly.