T60 & Backup & Recovery Questions

I'm seriously considering purchasing a T60 but am somewhat concerned regarding the fact that Lenovo does not include OS Recovery or Driver disks. I've never owned a PC that I haven't had to rebuild at least once. I realize that the machine ships with a rescue and recovery partition. Is it possible to reformat the remainder of the hard drive (partition with OS installed) and completely reinstall the OS from this partition? What happens if the hard drive is physically damaged? Can recovery CDs or DVDs be created using the Rescue and Recovery utilities as a precaution?

This is the only issue that is holding me back from ordering a laptop.

Thanks in advance for any advice/assistance.

 

You can reformat just the partition that has the OS. In terms of completely restoring from the recovery partition, I believe you can. I have not used Rescue and Recovery at all for my T60 as I use Acronis True Image Home. You can create recovery CDs/DVDs from Rescue and Recovery as well if you want.

 

I just spent some time reading both the restore and recovery manual and guidelines on reinstalling XP from Lenovo’s web site. The more I read, the more concerned I become. Could someone who’s actually used this application to completely reinstall XP comment on their experiences and overall satisfaction with the process?

 

All of the drivers and applications are in the IBMTools folder. The recovery discs create the recovery partition from which the OS/Apps/Drivers are re-installed.