New laptop lacks recovery partition.

I just bought a HP 15-DB0005DX from Best Buy. Their website says the computer has the Hp recovery manager. There is no recovery partition. No doubt the decision was made because the hard drive is only 128 GB. It looks like I will have to make recovery media. I have never done this. I would like to know how big the USB drive would need to be and how long the process would take place. Also how long it takes to restore the system from a USB . My laptops have never taken more than 40 minutes to restore from the recovery partition.

 

I don't know about restoring, but just doing a clean reinstall of Windows can easily be done in the settings via "Reset this PC", (Settings / Update & Security / Recovery) no recovery/install media needed. This will format the drive and install just a stock bare Windows environment, so any HP software you want will need to be downloaded and installed afterwards. That's what I usually do, if something ever happens, as I prefer starting with a clean slate anyway. If the option doesn't show up, as it might not depending how the system is configured by HP, you can make an install USB with a Microsoft tool. That'll also come in handy if swapping out drives or something later.

 

I took it back. HP does not have the specs or the drivers for this laptop. If I can't download the drivers I am not going to fool with it. The mistake was made by Best Buy even the size was wrong. I checked 2 others at Best Buy and it seems all a the SSD drive laptops lack the recovery manager and the recovery partition. .

 

Some models just don't use a recovery partition. I've seen ones which use a hidden Recovery folder in C:\, that gets automatically restored when using the "Reset this PC" function in the settings I mentioned before. Either way, I would always do a clean install on a new laptop anyway.

 

Lately I think they are changing the way things work, any time i enable Win 10 auto update service, it downloads and installs newest HP drivers from MS store as well (some of the drivers fail to install, then the computer won't boot up etc etc, but that's another story), so with every 6 months MS Win10 major update and HP drivers updating together with Windows from MS store, there is less need for recovery partition. What I would do is partially follow Ashlander advice: download and create Win10 USB installation drive, but I would not actually do fresh reinstall until needed, for one reason or another. There is nice sticky in Windows OS and Software forum how to do that.

 

Mine only has a cloud restore which takes a couple hours and will leave you with a new out of box experience; whether that's good or bad depends on whether you want to return to full stock. In my case (X360) there wasn't much bloat so it's far easier to trim that off the stock install than it is to install windows and all the drivers. This requires an internet connection and a 32 gig thumb, something to consider if your travels have you spending a lot of time out in the sticks. With a new PC you can go ahead and do a cloud restore before you set it up, the thumb will then become your stock restore disk and will have a backup available without any connection required.