Some laptops from six years ago had recovery partitions, not all of them. Depends on the type he has. My crappy Dell from six years ago didn't have a recovery partition and came with discs, same for my ex-wife's Dell a few years later. My dad's Compaq from closer to ten years ago had a recovery partition, but it wasn't hidden, it was the D: drive and was right out there in the open along with a readme file warning not to delete or place anything on that partition. That was one of the few times I had seen anything like that prior to recent years where just about everything has a hidden recovery partition.

Also I've never heard of any laptops providing you with blank discs in order to make your own system restore set. That seems really weird, I imagine it was pretty rare, and it is not surprising that it no longer happens, that system would be far too dependent on semi-tech savvy users, and if they fail to make their own backup discs prior to something going wrong they'd be screwed.