Recovery Discs vs. Recovery Partitions

[aimeeandbeatles]

While looking at the disk management thingy, I noticed there's a recovery partition on my HDD. I know what that is, but the "discovery" make me think about a debate.

Recovery Discs
Advantages:
Can use on different HDDs
Disadvantages
Can be slow
Can get lost or damaged

Recovery Partitions
Advantages
Not easily lost (unless you delete the partition) or damaged (if the HDD itself gets damaged, and then a recovery partiton won't be much help)
Faster
Disadvantages
Can't use a different HDD
[Speculation] Might get infected with a virus. I don't know much about viruses transferring between partitions, but you never know.

All of these (except the virus thing) came from Wikipedia, so I assume they're correct. So, which would you prefer?

 

[taper]

Recovery partitions have no advantage other than they're cheaper than discs for the OEMs. A partition is completely useless if you have a hard drive failure, and shouldn't be considered a true recovery solution. Your manufacturer should have a way of making recovery discs from the partition, I recommend everyone do that if you don't have a real system disc.

 

[Aramazd]

Recovery partitions suck. They don't help with hard drive failure, so discs it is.

 

[Turner]

Recovery partitions have no advantage other than they're cheaper than discs for the OEMs. A partition is completely useless if you have a hard drive failure, and shouldn't be considered a true recovery solution.

Recovery partitions suck. They don't help with hard drive failure, so discs it is.

What they said.

Your manufacturer should have a way of making recovery discs from the partition, I recommend everyone do that if you don't have a real system disc.

Yeah, it's sometimes a one-shot deal. So I have both for my computer, a recovery partition and the DVDs to restore it.

 

[PeteAtoms]

My laptop came with a recovery partition but no disk. When I was messing around with Ubuntu, and installed it, I wiped my entire HDD including the recovery partition. So when I reinstall windows, it is a completely stripped down windows. I had to use another computer to hunt down the necessary drives to even get my laptop online and make sound.

I wish I had a disk, but I managed to get all the drives I needed story on a usb memory stick. So I'm good.

 

[lndm]

What they said

+1 .

 

[Macha]

Recovery partitions suck. They don't help with hard drive failure, so discs it is.

Agreed. I'd have had to replace 50% more computers in the last few years if I had only recovery partitions.

 

[Chukchi Husky]

My computer came with a programme that would burn a couple of recovery DVDs (I think it needed 2). Only problem is that after the first disc the programme stopped working.

 

[Grisu]

Recovery partitions suck. They don't help with hard drive failure, so discs it is.

true, and on top of that, even if the partition is on a differen physical drive, you're still in trouble if your computer explodes/gets stolen, etc.

a recovery disc can (and should) be stored in a different physical location.

 

[Speedo]

Recovery partitions were made up for 2 simple reasons:

They save the OEMs a few pennies, and when joe average needs to reinstall everything because he's done something stupid, the OEMs don't have to listen to him whine about how he lost his CDs.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

Recovery partitions were made up for 2 simple reasons:

They save the OEMs a few pennies, and when joe average needs to reinstall everything because he's done something stupid, the OEMs don't have to listen to him whine about how he lost his CDs.

Now avg. joe whines about how he cannot access his recovery partition because the HDD failed ( okay, so this is a bit smarter than avg. joe )

Personally, I'd wipe the recovery partition right off the bat. Ive got enough Windows install disks laying around that it wouldnt be a problem installing Windows again. And most manuf. offer the drivers on their websites, so getting those isn't a big problem.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

The only reason I keep my partition is because the rent-to-own company keeps the disks until this thing is paid off. That's also the reason why I can't upgrade right away, 'cos if they take it back, we won't get paid back for the parts we upgrades.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

So just keep the original parts. Then when you're taking it back, pull out the upgraded ones and put the new ones in.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Yes, but if I was in school or something, my mother wouldn't be smart enough to do that. LOL.

 

[Speedo]

Now avg. joe whines about how he cannot access his recovery partition because the HDD failed ( okay, so this is a bit smarter than avg. joe )

Hard drive failures are a relatively rare occurance. I've never bothered keeping statistics, but I'd say you're probably going to average at least 20-25 people who fook up their comp and require an OS reinstall for every actual HDD failure. It's still a win-win for the OEMs.

Personally, I'd wipe the recovery partition right off the bat. Ive got enough Windows install disks laying around that it wouldnt be a problem installing Windows again. And most manuf. offer the drivers on their websites, so getting those isn't a big problem.

Well, anyone capable of doing that is pretty much by definition not a joe average. But to be fair, some of the OEMs put some very, very nice troubleshooting and testing tools in that recovery partition.