With us, we will send the customer recovery media (DVD set) if the partition dies, and we have a nag window that says "Please make your restore set now." Every 14 days (or until you check No) until you've made the discs.

But, I more than once (especially in Vista) have to have the customer (who hasn't made a password recovery disk, or lost admin privileges, etc..) boot to the recovery partition, open the command prompt...

And the lovely
"net user Administrator /active:yes"

90% of the time saves those cases.

I have 2 problems with the partition. #1 it is a 'sealed' partition which allows you to right to it, but not delete from it.

#2 It is a regular HDD. Even a 16gb flash that was sealed attached to the drive (hybrid) would be acceptable.

Oh well.