My laptop contains a partion (factory installed) to allow me to put my laptop back to factory setting. or rather the windows install is there if i ever need to reinstall. My question is... what do i do if my hard drive packs in and i am unable to restore windows? am I allowed to do some sort of back up to allow me to buy a new drive and put windows back on (to me, this is legitimate seeing as i would only be replacing a broken hard drive)or ghost my entire drive? I'd like to know what is "legal" for me to do. and if so what options i have to allow me to be able to keep my licence. many thanks for looking.

I personally ghost my complete hdd. As far as I know I own that particular cd key and I can reinstall it anytime I want to to the particular machine. If all you change is a cloned hdd xp won't even nag about it except on the first boot it will ask for a reboot to install the hdd.

good enough for me. ty per.