Recently I've been called out to more and more machines where the hard drive has completely failed and customers don't have access to the manufacturer recovery disks or Windows media to restore their system.
PCPro has just done an article this topic here The Recovery Disk Rip Off
In most cases these days new machines don't come with recovery CD/DVD included. The software required is often in a hidden partition on your hard disk. Which is great if you're recovering from virus or software crashes, but if your hard disk becomes physically faulty for any reason then you lose everything.
So, if your machine is still working or whenever you get a new one, look for the instructions on how to burn your own copy of the recovery media to some blank CD/DVDs before you end up stuck without and have to pay the price for new ones and wait several days for them to turn up before you can get back online.
