Recovery Discs contain, the Operating System, drivers for hardware and any other software that was installed on the PC when it came from the factory. The recovery disks will return your PC back to "Out of the box" state. You can start the recovery procedure, by inserting the the CD/DVD disc into the drive and restarting the PC. When the PC boots, it will recognise the CD/DVD in the drive and start the recovery utility. You, "the user", then have to answer a couple of question such as, "Performing this action will erase everything on the hard disk", do you want to continue? You would then answer Y for yes.

The reason you cannot see the recovery partition is because the manufacturer creates it as a hidden partition so that "you" the user can delete it by accident. A partition means that a hard disc can be split into 2 or more partitions. So you may have your operating system on one partition and your recovery partition on the other.

Some manufacturers allow you to create your own. You will need to refer to your PC's userguide for more info. :smiley:

Manily it is big manufacturers e.g Dell, HP etc that do this sought of thing.