Primary HDD has failed

Hey all, been quite awhile since my last post.

My HDD in my HP Pavillion dv9700 Laptop has failed. It locks up when the WIN logo begins to appear (faded) and stays that way indefinately. So far I have been able to get it to boot after powering down and restarting several times over before it finally loads.

This is directly AFTER a factory reset. The BIOS HDD diagnostic check reads "replace HDD" after I run it.

So...

When I replace this drive, I am hoping to install it in the secondary drive bay and if I can get the failing drive to boot 1 more time I can factory restore onto the new drive. (If that is possible, I dont remember an option to choose drives on previous factory restore)

In the event that the failing drive never boots again, how can I get my OS and drivers onto the new HDD? I imagine that HP has a driver package that I can download, but that will not include my OS. Is there a way to install Vista using my existing product key without having to purchase a new copy?

Thanks in advance.

You guys are the best!

Regards,
Anthony

 

You can always call Microsoft and tell them you need to install again because of hardware changes.

 

I just had a hard drive fail suddenly today. I had a bootable ToDo Backup CD and was able to clone my OS partitions to the new drive rather easily.

In your case I think it should work as well but you would want to clone the entire failing HD to the new HD rather than only specific partitions. That way you would be cloning the recovery partition as well. So you could technically do a factory recovery at some point in the future if need be.

So download ToDo Backup and install on working computer. Then Create the bootable CD. When you install your second HD you would boot from the CD and use the Clone Disk option to copy the entire original HD to the new one like this.

I think you will be better off using the bootable CD since you current Vista may be a bit unstable and running from that HD will risk shutdown in the middle of the cloning. The only caveat is the free version is rather slow. I only cloned a 25gb partition and it took 30 minutes. I think they make the free version a bit slower than the paid version but can't say for sure. A 200 or 300gb HD may take a couple of hours but the results have been error free for each of the three times I have used the program over the last two years.

Of course, be very sure that you are selecting the correct source and destination drives when you set up the cloning process so you are copying the drive with data to the empty drive.

And don't overwrite the old drive until you know your new drive is functioning correctly.

If I forgot something or you need more info, please ask.

 

Thanks for the reply. I do not have the new drive yet and I won't know if the old drive will boot again. I am going to leave it alone until I get the new one.

In the event that the old drive never boots again, is there a way for me to reinstall VISTA using my existing product key?

Thanks again.

Anthony

 

I've never had luck using the license key on a name brand computer with a different disc. Someone else may be able to help with that. Depending on the age of the laptop you may be able to order recovery discs from HP. There are many variations of the DV9700 check the tag on the bottom for the exact model number and post back.

The thing about using Todo is it doesn't matter if the HD boots or not. As long as it can be read then Todo will copy the data outside of Vista. It will give you two chances of getting the OS running. With no bad sectors on the new HD Vista may boot or if not then you could try using the newly copied recovery partition to do a factory restore on the new HD.

 

Hey I still cannot afford to buy a new internal drive. I have several external drives though. Can I use ToDo to clone to an external drive and run from there until I can afford to buy an internal drive? I believe that my BIOS has an option to boot from USB drive. Thanks for the feedback.