Recovery disk use for newly installed hard drive

[tlpinspw]

A friend's Sony Vaio has a dying HDD...I've confirmed that within Vista's repair utility (it says the Vista install cannot be repaired), and with SystemRescueCD (Gparted says the disk has many, many bad sectors and recommends backing up the data).

This Vaio has a recovery partition, which I am copying to another drive, and which I hope to put back on to a new drive (when I get it and get it installed).

Will I be able to use the Recovery Disk I have downloaded and burned to then do a fresh install by using the Recovery Partition?

 

[JustinW]

The recovery disc from this site cannot re-install Vista for you. It only contains the files needed to repair an exisitng Windows installation when it well not boot.

You can try imaging the bad hard drive to get the system recovery partition and restore it over to the new drive. Be prepared for it not to work though as well. If it doesn't work, then you'll need to get your hands either on a recovery disc that came with the laptop, contact Sony for one (but won't be free), or find a friend with a Vista disc that can be borrowed (As long as you enter the product key found on the laptop it is fine).

 

[tlpinspw]

The recovery disc from this site cannot re-install Vista for you. It only contains the files needed to repair an exisitng Windows installation when it well not boot.

You can try imaging the bad hard drive to get the system recovery partition and restore it over to the new drive. Be prepared for it not to work though as well. If it doesn't work, then you'll need to get your hands either on a recovery disc that came with the laptop, contact Sony for one (but won't be free), or find a friend with a Vista disc that can be borrowed (As long as you enter the product key found on the laptop it is fine).

I'll give this a try. First I need the new hdd.