Vista - Free upgrade disk deleted OEM recovery partition

I have an old machine i am giving away and decided to use the free upgrade disk sent to me back in 2007. It installed fine and I got SP1 on it and cleaned it up.

After everything was done I noticed the E-Machines recovery partition was wiped. Is this because I now have the Vista upgrade disk with the # on that for the COA? Not the sticker on the machine.....I had to activate it with the # on the upgrade disk. I can't figure out why it would wipe the recovery partition with the factory XP image on it. Will this disk work if the next owner needs to do an install? Guess so..

Have you heard of this happening with OEM upgrade disks? Thanks.

Lol you can answer my question from my other post...If put backup files in my backup partition, and re-install vista on my current partition will it delete those files in the backup partition?

Well, I guess it just deletes it because you now have another OS and now we would use our OEM upgrade disk for the "genuine copy" of Windows. I had never done this before and have never heard of it but it would make sense the more I think of it. I guess there's no going back to XP (unless you have a cloned image and I do) not that I would want that. I am selling the system so just wondering what to tell the new owner. I will give him the upgrade disk and tell him what happened.

Yeah, I'm trying to re-install vista because i think it will fix my BSOD but i want to keep my music on itunes, and a few pictures....maybe a few other files too. don't have an external hard drive

I just got one of these. It should have enough room for all you need. Consider using one. They are very nice....and 16GB!

http://www.buy.com/prod/sandisk-16gb...210754552.html