Hardrive bust, no new OS, require assistance

[omer94]

ok so basically i own a prescario cq61 laptop and the hard drive on it is barely living, it fails all tests including windows' own tests and 3rd party software's like 'seatools' so i basically need to replace it.
the problem is, if i try to format the disk or even if i buy another one, my operating system will go with it becuase it's stuck on the old drive, so how do i get it onto the new one? i dont want to buy a whole new licence, it seems ridiculous to me to buy a new licence for something like this.
so i just need advice on how to, if i can solve this problem maybe there is some program that can copy my OS onto a flash drive or something like that or maybe compaq gives their laptops a restore feature like the ibm thinkpads. so yeah, any help is appreciated

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

Don't you have an os sticker on the bottom of the laptop?

 

[omer94]

yes i do.... why?

 

[hang-the-9]

If you replace the drive, the restore partition will go with it. There may be a utility provided that will let you make restore disks from Windows, or you can order a set of disks from the company.

If the drive is not totally dead, you can try an imaging software to create an image of the drive (clonezilla will work here) on an external hard-drive and then restore the image on the new drive. Most cloning programs though won't run on a drive that has too many errors.

 

[omer94]

thanks for the advice ill look into it but im a complete novice at this kind of stuff

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

If you have an OEM os sticker on it you can reinstall your windows