Recovering T43P original image, confused about upgrading R&a

[tnedator]

Ok, I have finally decided to go back to the original factory state using media that I just bought from IBM. Prior to reading warnings on this site a while back, I had upgraded R&R, since that is what system update recommended. As a result, my old backups weren't compatible and somewhere along the way I lost my R&R partition (pre-desktop??).

I keep an encrypted large USB drive with me that I periodically sync my documents and key other files to, so that if I need to, I can boot into R&R and go back to a factory image if something got squirrely and I needed a quick fix. I have now idea how or why the predesktop area was killed on the R&R upgrades, but I have read discussions on here about that not being unusual.

So, what should I do? Do I upgrade R&R, or is it best to stay with whichever version originally shipped with the T43? I want to make sure I continue to have the restore from factory state in the pre-desktop area.

Thanks