Using Recovery Partition From Old Hard Drive For New Hard Drive

[ginky4]

I have a Sata Hard Drive from a Dell Studio 1555 laptop that is bad. If I remove and hook up the bad drive from the Dell 1555 with a Sata to USB adapter and plug it into another computer I can see and access the Recovery Partition just fine.

Is it possible to install a new hard drive into my laptop but somehow restore windows 7 back to factory from the Recovery Partition on the old hard drive?

[Midknyte]

Never heard of that working, but you can try.

All your really need is a Dell OEM Windows 7 DVD. They are bios coded for Dell systems, so it shouldn't require a key.

[ginky4]

I have the Dell dvd so I can always do it that way. I was just wondering if there was a way to do a restore from the old hard drive's recovery partition since it is going be used in the same exact laptop that it came out of.

[Train]

Clone the old hdd to the new one. Then run the install. Should work.

[Midknyte]

I have the Dell dvd so I can always do it that way. I was just wondering if there was a way to do a restore from the old hard drive's recovery partition since it is going be used in the same exact laptop that it came out of.

But if the drive is bad, how do you know that the recovery partition isn't corrupted as well? I would just go with the OS DVD and avoid using a suspect drive. GIGO

[ginky4]

I will try a clone. Since the original hard drive is bad I am not sure that it will still clone. I am going to put both new and old (bad) hard drives in a desktop computer and then try do to a clone with Acronis.

[GrayOne]

I will try a clone. Since the original hard drive is bad I am not sure that it will still clone. I am going to put both new and old (bad) hard drives in a desktop computer and then try do to a clone with Acronis.

I was curious if you tried this and if it worked. I'm going to try the same thing in about 2 weeks when I can spare the bucks for a hdd. Someone gave me a Sony Vaio VGN-NS328J notebook for parts, that was in about 150 pcs in a box with no adapter. He said that 3 of his friends that were supposed to know something about working on computers had worked on it and couldn't do anything with it, so I figured it was probably a motherboard or cpu issue, but decided to get an adapter and plug it in and see if anything happened. I managed to locate a service manual, no thanks to Sony's website (the manual I found wasn't much help anyway), and managed to put it back together. I ordered a generic charger/adapter for less than $12 so that I wouldn't have much in it in case it was a major problem. To my surprise the computer started up, but hung when trying to start the OS (Vista 64bit Home Edition). I suspected the hdd after running a few tests and the mobo and cpu seemed to work flawlessly. I ran Spinrite on it and the C drive had several bad sectors, but it ran right through the recovery partition with no errors. I can actually start the recovery process, but it stops with errors. I then took the hdd out and hooked it up to my desktop computer and used Acronis to make and image of the entire hdd. After I get a new hdd, I'll try to mount the image and restart the recovery process after reinstalling the hdd back into the notebook. I don't see why it wouldn't work...