Cloning a almost dead hard drive

I have a sony laptop that the HD is ..well next to dead. I cant make any reinstall disks from it since i wont even boot to windows anymore. Is there a way I can clone that HD to another HD of a smaller size and keep the Hidden Factory partition? I can plug it into my home comp and see the disk but thats as far as I know what to do with it.Or can I use my Win 7 home disk and use the COA key on the bottom of the laptop..if they work?Or am I just crewed and had to buy a new COA and reinstall Win 7?

 

I can't answer the COA question.

As far as cloning what is your plan? Todo will clone the laptop HD but I'm not sure about to a smaller HD. You would need to clone it to another laptop HD is this what you were planning?

 

Your COA should work as long as it's the same version of 7 (ie.. Home Premium, Utimate, etc...). Have you tried startup repair? Maybe you can get it to boot. If not, you could also try something like Parted Magic to snag all your files off of your drive then use the recovery partition to reformat.

 

I have already tried to run the recovery function. it gets amost done then shuts off and says windows needs to finish installing -put in the windows disk. Im thinking i'll either have to buy the reinstall disks from sony or just buy win7 retail.

 

What exactly is it doing when you try to boot?

 

IT says HARD DISK FAILURE...blah blah blah...F1 for setup or F2 to contiue. F2 gets it going into WIndows install but then shuts down and restarts. I have all thefiles I need from it. Just when I get my new HD I have to reinstall Win7 from a disk. I was hoping to clone the recovery partition to the new drive and have it install from it.?

 

You could try ToDo link in my other post. You would install in on your PC. Create a bootable CD which is an option in the program.

Then connect both the old and new laptop drive to your PC (You might have to temporarily disconnect your normal PC HD depending on how many HD(s) your PC will hold). Then boot from the CD and try to clone the old laptop HD to the new laptop HD.

***Many manufacturer's provide recovery CD's for just the price of shipping and media. So under $20. Worth taking a look at Sony's site to see what your options are.