[MrForbes]

I'm not sure about the Vista "back up" partition...what is that?

I do know for a fact that recent HP laptops that shipped with XP have a recovery partition that has the system recovery information--this is what you copy when you make the recovery CDs when you first get the new laptop, and it is used in case you ever need to reinstall XP for whatever reason.

I would guess that Vista computers from HP work the same way?