[dnanian]

I've tested this myself again a few weeks ago - with a straight-up Smart Update restore, the recovery partition was maintained as expected. I don't know why your recovery partition was removed - as I've said previously, we copy ONLY to the selected partition.

I wish I could reproduce the problem, but I haven't yet been able to.

Note, though, that there's no real "fear" involved in losing the partition: reinstalling Lion will bring it back if "lost"...