The recovery drive was created by Dell when your sys was supplied, it is
only used to recover the sys to factory supplied condition. Usually its
hidden. How you access any recovery drive depends on the PC maker.
If you have recovery disks, there is no need to worry about a recovery
drive.
(Recovery does not store your data)

"Wakener" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
>
> Hi--
> After some major problems with my system, I had to perform a complete
> reinstall of Vista. The folks from Dell talked me through it. But now,
> in my My Computer window, where it used to show my 2 hard drives plus
> the Recovery Drive, it no longer shows the Recovery Drive. I was
> relatively sure that space was partitioned off of my C drive, but it's
> not showing up. there's a possibility that a technician hid it while
> remotely accessing my system. Is there a way for me to check? And if
> there is no Recovery Drive, how much should I worry (it sure didn't help
> me LAST time the computer needed restoring)? I am planning to get an
> offsite backup a la Carbonite or an external drive for backups soon. For
> all I know, that makes the Recovery Drive a moot point anyway, but I'm
> not sure.
>
>
> --
> Wakener

Get a good backup program like Ghost and develop good backup habits and you
won't have the problem. Trusting all your data to a backup site is dangerous
and unreliable as you found out.

"Wakener" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
>
> Thank you. Still, let's hope it's info I never need again. I was
> fortunate enough to be able to evacuate my critical data to a fleet of
> enclosed drives, But I don't want to deal with the endless re-installs
> again. And for the record, I did have an offsite backup, but it was
> notorious for being a poor one. I let it lapse, and was planing to get a
> new one on the payday . . . after the problems decided to start.
>
>
> --
> Wakener