If you are going to reinstall using the recovery partition (F8 at power on) there is no need for any backup.  If you are not going to use the Dell recovery partition to reinstall, you will nullify the recovery partition as once a manual install is done the recovery partition is no longer useable.   However, I use Acronis True Image to backup my hard drive to a separate hard drive.  When I backup, I backup all partitions on the hard drive to the separate hard drive.  Then if the hard drive were to fail and have to be replaced I can fully recover to a new hard drive including the Dell recovery and hardware diagnostic partitions. Also, doing periodic backups with Acronis True Image allows recovery back to the last time it was backup if the Operating System is corrupted for whatever reason.  Very little is lost this way.  An Acronis full hard drive restore generally takes approx 1 hour.   Acronis is not a free program but if you ever have to use at all it is worth the price.  [URL]
I'm going to have to reinstall of Vista home Premium (x64) on my Inspiron 530S. In preparation for this I've made full MS backups of C: and also backups of 3rd party software by way of MS SynchToy. However, I haven't included the recovery partition D: in these backups. Is omitting D: in backup OK, or will the omission cause problems once I reinstall? Thanks for any advice.
Is it necessary to back up recovery partition?