Computer help forum: Copying a Recovery Partition from a bad HDD to a new one

If the old hard drive failed/is bad, can you access it? If not, we're done. If yes, you cannot clone a slave/USB (in an external case) drive. Usually. Tell us the status of the failed drive.

If the drive is accessible, I have used this to unhide a drive.

http://www.partition-tool.com/personal.htm

Then burned a copy of the hidden restoral partition.

The cost will be minimal and the Recovery discs should install the operating system, all programs and drivers per the original factory state.. It also should install the recovery partition on the new hard drive.

Unfortunately, copying the recovery partition files from the old drive may not get the job done. First, you'll need to partition the new drive so the drive has the same drive letters for both the C: drive and the recovery partition. Both must have the same drive letters as the original drive had. And even if done correctly, the recovery setup key may not function as designed if there's anything slightly wrong..

Hope this helps.

Grif

..but the install from Recovery Discs should be fairly straight forward. Place the first recovery disc in the DVD drive, then restart the computer and it should walk you through the options to format the drive and install everything back to it's factory state.

In fact, if you search the HP site for your model number and recovery options for your version of Vista, it should give you the specific instructions for using the recovery discs.

Hope this helps.

Grif