I never use the recovery disc, because they are full of bloated crap.
On a new computer I partition it, with one partition called backup.
I then remove the crap, and use utilities to look for errors and defrag.
I put on only essentially programs , and then using Acronis make a backup to hard drive and dvd discs. So even if the hard drive goes kaputt, you can transfer the backup discs to another hard drive.
