In newer Mac's (2012 onward IIRC) you can just boot into a net installer, and it goes and fetches the installer from the internet before re-installing.
http://www.macrumors.com/2011/07/20/internet-recovery-lets-n...
So the drive doesn't even have recovery on it.
http://www.macrumors.com/2012/02/07/apple-brings-lion-intern...