Hi ,what did you use to create the seperate partition ,moving apps to another partion doesent help as the app would only have to be reinstall anyway .
If you created a partition seperate from the one that had the OS on it with third party software ,and move important data to that partition ,running the system restore disk should not affect that partition I wouldn't think . it should just format and restore to the 1st partition!
Oh yeah ,HP tech are just reading from a book .i know i trained to be one ,but quit after a few days ,good thing to as EDS lost the HP acct to some foregin country anyway .