Are contents of Recovery CDs the same as HPA?

[JEBB]

I bought the Recovery CDs from IBM several months ago as a long term investment. To this point I haven't had to use them nor the hidden partition (HPA).

It occurred to me that I have been operating under the assumption that the contents of the Recovery CDs and the hidden partition are the same. Is that true?

[Kyocera]

I've recovered my t42 with both the HPA and the factory CDs from ibm and it is the end result is the same.

[croooowe]

Unless a package has been updated in the preloads since you acquired your laptop the discs created by the Service partition and discs purchased from IBM/Lenovo should be identical.