LG is apparently not producing laptops anymore so they have (apparently) stopped posting their recovery software of the LG website… at least I could not find it on the Canada, US, UK or German sites.
This means if your LG laptop has a hard disk failure and you have only the LG RECOVERY DISK that you made when the machine was new… you are screwed. You have a lovely compressed LG proprietary LB1 file that you can not do anything with.
After searching the web in vain I found a LG X120 Notebook I had which still had a partition that contained the LG SMART RECOVERY software. I tested it and it appears to be standalone software that lets you recover from the LG RECOVERY partition OR from the LG RECOVERY DISK.
Here is the LG-Smart-Recovery Software. Just download onto the machine you want to use it on (yes, this means you will need to install an operating system at least temporarily to run the software).
Enjoy!