ATI with HP Laptop with Recovery Manager

Just got a new HP Laptop. It has a "hidden" partition used to restore the PC to its original factory condition, if necessary. This partition is formatted as FAT and not NTFS.
Is it possible to create images of: [1] the entire hard drive at one time and restore it, if necessary?; [2] the individual partitions and restore them, if necessary?
If either or both options are possible, what is the recommended method?
Where does the Acronis Secure Zone figure into the "equation" with this type of hard drive layout?
Since the MBR is changed when using the ASZ, where does that come into play?
Also, I'm running Vista Ultimate 64-bit. From what I've seen on the forum, that shouldn't be a problem. Correct?

 

For Q1, yes.
For Q2, why would you want to do this?

HP gives you the option of creating Factory Restore DVDs. I would create them then nuke the restore partition as long as you have done the whole disk backup as per Q1. You'll then have two ways of restoring the system to Factory state - the Acronis backup and the Factory Restore DVDs.

Instead of using the SZ, you would avoid possible problems if you use an external usb (or eSata) drive to hold your backup images.

BTW, before you add anything much to the laptop, you should test that both the Factory Restore DVDs and the Acronis backup (via the Rescue CD) will work.

 

I would add to what DwnNDrty said, that you could make one backup of the entire hard drive and save that. It has both the hidden partition and your boot partition (C. After that, you can backup only the C: partition.

If you have to restore to a new hard drive, you restore the first backup to put the hidden partition back and the old C: partition. Then you can restore just the latest C: partition backup over the old C: partition to bring the system up to date.

Definitely use an external hard drive. You have no protection against drive failure if you only use the Secure Zone.