There are a few different kinds of recovery partition.
The first is an OEM recovery partition. These are the recovery partition that is on the hard disk of a laptop or desktop you buy from a manufacturer like Dell or HP. They are used alongside tools provided as part of the installation to create recovery DVDs as well as to perform a Factory Restore. For example, my Lenovo Thinkpad T550 came with Windows 8 Home and therefore had a partition that would be utilized if I wanted to do a Factory Restore.
Another kind is installed by Windows 10. (possibly Windows 8 as well). This is a Windows Recovery Environment and will be booted if the system fails to boot a specified number of times. It is a good idea to keep this one around as it will provide some capability to troubleshoot the system if it encounters boot issues. it is also necessary to access a few boot options.
A "Third" kind is sort of unusual, in that some motherboards actually provide the capability to create a "recovery" partition. With those motherboards you could install your OS environment and the desired programs onto a partition, while leaving unallocated/unpartitioned space on the drive, then enter the System BIOS and create a recovery Partition out of that installation that you can "factory reset" using the BIOS later, wiping the existing data on the drive and restoring it to how it was when you created the image.
