Recreating all partitions on a new hard drive of Dell Dimension 8400

[tulub]

Hello,
recently my HD died and I had to get a new one (which is a bigger size then the original shipped with PC). I would like to be able recreate Dell recovery and diagnostics partitions as were on the original drive (I just have a generic XP Pro CD, but no Dell recovery CDs). I am somehow sure it is possible but I did not find any concrete insructions on Internet yet. I am sure that replacing failed HD is a comon problem, so someone probably did it before me.
BTW, I already found discussions on how little use the partitions have, and the advices to forget about the partitions and use all available space for primary Window installation. Please, do not repeat that. I am a stickler who wants my system to operate same way it was with the old drive with all the Ctrl+F11, F12, etc. commands available at boot time. So, if someone has done that or know how - please help me out with instructions.. And if possible, I'd like to use a freeware software

 

[PhilFrisbie]

The only way you can get your system back to factory is to use the proper Dell recovery CDs. You should have had the option to create a set of recovery CDs when you first fired up your PC.

 

[ram1009]

I think the only way you will accomplish your mission is to contact Dell and my guess is they will want to sell you one of *their* HDDs. You can always use the one you already bought as mass storage.