Recovery Drive D Copied to External

[deekthagnome]

Hello,
I have a failing drive on my Inspiron 1420 running Vista. I already have my info backed up, but I don't have the recovery disks to reload windows on the new drive. Am I able to copy my recovery drive to my external to boot from usb and to reload from there? If so, how do I accomplish this? I'm guessing I can't just copy the drive like I would with any other.

 

[phil22]

Copying just the recovery partition to your external hard drive will not work.

You need to create a hard disk image of the entire hard drive (all partitions) using disk-imaging software, and save that disk image file to your external drive.

Then buy and install a new hard drive inside your Inspiron.
Boot your Inspiron from the disk-imaging software's boot CD.
Plug in the external drive and write the disk image to the new hard drive with the disk-imaging software.

A selection of free disk-imaging software is here:

http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-drive-imaging-program.htm

 

[flynn1]

hi.may i ask after successfully recovered all data & files including D: recovery partitions (windows7) from a dead hdd,and copying them to a new hdd.will using a system repair disk (created earlier) make it work to reinstall the OS ?

 

[popatim]

The repair disk will not reinstall windows for you, it is for trying to repair the windows that is already installed. The best it can do for you to 'install windows' is to restore an image that you had already created on an external drive.

To reinstall windows you would access the recovery partition and use that to return the laptop to the 'out of the box' state - just like the first time you ever turned it on.

 

[popatim]

Also, Please don't post in old threads; this one is a year old and neither of the original two users are around anymore.

You should create a new thread for any problems or questions that you cant find a resolution for.

Thank you.
Tim