Things You'll Need

Instructions

1

Open "My Computer." This icon is located on your desktop and can be accessed by double clicking on it. My Computer holds the contents of every internal and external drive connected to your computer, including the recovery files.
2

Find your recovery partition. On Dell computers a certain amount of space is set aside on your hard drive to house the recovery files. In My Computer it shows up as a separate hard drive, usually given the drive letter "D." When you locate this, double click on it to open.
3

Open your DVD burning software. The program that you use doesn't matter as long as it has the ability to burn DVDs. The standard size of Dell Recovery files is just under 2GB of space, which is far larger than will fit on a CD, but a perfect size for a DVD.
4

Add the Dell Recovery Files to your DVD burning software. This will tell your DVD burning program that these are the files you want to write to a disk.
5

Put your blank DVD in your DVD writer drive and select the "Burn" button from within your DVD burning software. This will write a copy of your Dell Recovery Files to your DVD, at which point you will always have a copy even if something goes wrong on your computer.