Recovery partitions are the work of satan. They do whatever the vendor wants them to do, and that's usually not a reinstall. Unless they reformat the OS partition (which they commonly don't) your info if likely going to pop straight back up again when the process has completed.
They are an excuse given by OEMs not to have to give you a Windows CD. Personally I don't like having a chunk of my hard drive space devoted to these stupid recovery partitions.