Recovery HD?

[amitabhbansal]

friends,
I have Macbook Pro 17" intel based which came with pre-installed Snow Leopard, I have done a fresh install of LION, and now i have a windows 7 bootcamp too in it,
Whenever i press the OPTION key while macbook starts to select the Prtition it shows me Macintosh HD (LION), Windows 7 and Recover HD, the question is what is this recovery HD? as i got 2 dvd along with macbook which is Snow Leopard and Application, then what is in this recovery hd? how to use it? and if i have installed LION what changes does it have.
Thanks

 

[Untouchab1e]

The Recovery partition is actually great to have. If your OSX Lion install ever goes tits up, you can at any point just boot into the recovery partition and re-install the operating system. As far as I know it requires an active internet connection though as it has to download the setup files, but still.. useful to have around.

 

[amitabhbansal]

thanks for the reply, but what is the use of recovery hd if it requires internet? maybe we are traveling and started the macbook and it fails then we have to go for recovery, and at the time of traveling how we will get internet connection? ridiculous

 

[Untouchab1e]

You would be right if if not for the fact that I was initially incorrect.. read this. Basically, you can restore Lion from the Recovery partition, but if for some reason the recovery partition is lost, then you can download everything needed to set up again..

 

[Tonewheel]

Gang, the main thing I am wondering about is this...

If one holds down the OPT key during startup and chooses the RECOVERY DISK, will the fresh install of Lion erase the entire destination drive or will it simply install a fresh system while leaving EVERYTHING (all User accounts, applications, etc.) intact?