So there is clearly no way for me to create the recovery partition from the recovery disc by any means? I can't say for certain. My company makes our own recovery discs and not from the SoftThinks software. Hmmmm but thanks for making me think of that! Alas, as I have never used their software to create a recovery disc (we only use it for HDD based recovery) I do not know what abilities it has. However, I am going to wager a guess that the CD may actually have the ability to rebuild the partition, but it won't help you at all. See, when the partition (or the CD) boots, it checks for a USB key. If that USB key is present, it unlocks different options. This USB key is encrypted and contains the licenses to create, recreate, or activate the recovery partition. Without that, even if the CD you have could recreate the partition, you wouldn't ever see that option. Thanks for the info! but anyway if later u mange to find out a trick to create the partition form the recovery disc please post it over here! Thanks!