Originally Posted by msb0b

In that case, I highly recommend users to run through some drills in system failure scenarios. With IT department's guidance if needed. Don't wait until crisis is upon you to pray for the data recovery procedure to work.


While optical drives are the de-facto ways to deliver software to computers, it is not the only way. There are many ways to skin a cat.

In the last couple of years, the industry is moving toward utility/recovery partitions on the system drive. For instance, if there is some kind of OS error on your ThinkPad, push the blue ThinkVantage button to boot from the utility partition. You can choose to restore to an earlier backup or factory state. No optical drive needed. Well, not unless the system drive fails or the utility partition gets erased.