OS Backup/restore, reinstallation, disk partitioning doubts (Studio 15)

Hi!

I have ordered a Studio 15 laptop in India. It is going to be delivered to me in a few days. In the meantime, I decided to do a little research on the OS backup and restore system that Dell has put in place on all their Win7 laptops. I have read all the relevant information that Dell provides on this topic. But I still have a few doubts, so I hope someone here can guide me. These are my questions:

1. Dell recommends we create a set of recovery discs the moment we receive our laptop:

http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/dsn/document?c=us&cs=19&docid=62A668E1C399857AE040AE0AB8E12942&l=en&s=dhs

a)What exactly does this procedure create a backup of? Does it create an image of the whole hard drive (all partitions)?

b) And can I save this particular backup on an external hard drive instead of burning them onto DVD's (Because it is much more economical to use a USB hard drive i already own, and I haven't found DVD's to be as reliable as external storage in the long run). Or is it that this procedure creates a set of bootable DVD's?

2. The laptop comes with three partitions, according to users from many forums. The first one it seems is a set of tools from Dell, in a hidden 100 MB partition. The second is the OS partition. The third is apparently the recovery partition, which contains the factory image, "factory.wim", and this partition is about 10 GB.

a) Factory.wim contains an image of which of the above partitions? Only the OS partition or the hidden 100 MB partition too?

b) I usually prefer to create two partitions other than the OS partition to store my personal files. But some users in some other forum (not this one) have said that if the default factory partitions are edited, like if i shrink the OS partition to create extended partitions, the dell recovery options that are usually accessible by clicking F8 during boot up will disappear. Is this true? If so, what is the Dell recommended way of creating extended partitions?

c) What is the purpose of the 100 MB partition? What tools does it contain exactly?

3. What of the built in backup and restore feature in Windows 7? Does Dell recommend we use this feature to effectively backup the hard drive?

4. Let us say my Hard Drive is completely wiped out (How? Maybe I was fiddling around with a Linux Live CD, and accidentally formatted everything with Gparted :p ) . I assume I cannot access the Dell factory recovery feature by pressing F8, as it is a part of the Windows boot procedure. But let us say I had made a copy of the factory.wim file on my ext. hard drive. How can I restore the OS with this file? Can I do a Restore in this case using the Recovery DVD I create in Point 1. above? ( I know that I can use the imagex tool from microsoft to recover from this image, but i have no idea how to. I heard that the process requires a WinPE disc, which I do not posses).

Thanks in advance!