I searched the posts for a while but don't find my particular prob. Forgive me if I failed to find it if it's there.

I have a HP Pavillion with XP SP2. A while back I added my old HDD as a slave and BACKUP my files to it. Both are partitioned HDD, but the slave was formatted to use the space. Many crashes lately and tons of garbage progs and stuff so I figured I'd do a recovery to start over. All filed backed up to the slave HDD.

My question is whether the recovery will touch the backup HDD or should I REMOVE it for the recovery and then REINSTALL it afterwards. I deselected it in the restore preferences panel but don't want to lose my files.

Thanks for any responses and for help in the past. Once again I forgot my login so had to register anew, but I use the FORUM somewhat regularly and have always been grateful for the help. (I admit I usually only come by when I need something, like a bad relative.)

The recovery will effect only your system partition / drive. If you have a second drive it will not be effected.good news. Thank you. Ive done the recovery in the past but forget the steps when I select the recovery console I get 3 choices as to login. I selected "3.Windows" but didn't recall what to do at the command prompt.

This time I pushed F10 longer and got a pretty Compaq PC Recovery Console so I'm running that now. (I was wrong about it being an HP, that was the last one, this one's a Presario SR1500NX. Aren't they the same Mfr?)

This seems the be a better option, no? Is there any reason that you would rather do a recovery from the command prompt than use the Recovery for Dummies console?

Thanks again for the time & sharing of expertise.