Installing Windows 7 on a new HD

saints · 05 Jan 2011

Hi all,

I have a new HP Pavillion Laptop that I would like to put a new hard drive in. It currently has Windows 7 preloaded from the factory, but does not have any recovery or installation cds with it. I want to install a 500GB Western Digital Internal Hard Drive. I have also purchased a USB drive with 32GB of memory and an external drive with 250GB of memory.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I have to image my hard drive to the external drive (250GB) which I will boot from with the new internal drive in the computer. Then this will install Windows 7 on the new internal hard drive.
I made a "recovery" disk on the thumbdrive mentioned above, but it would not load Windows on the new drive. It seems extremely excessive that I had to buy all of these extra items just because there was no CD supplied to install Windows on a new hard drive. Am I missing anything here? Thanks in advance.

Bare Foot Kid · 05 Jan 2011

Hello saints, welcome to Seven Forums!

Have you looked around in the Windows start menu for an entry that will let you burn a set of recover disks?

click to enlarge

Installing Windows 7 on a new HD-hp-start-menu.jpg

saints · 05 Jan 2011

I have. HP had a program that lets you create recovery disks, I assumed this is the same thing the Windows option does. This is what I saved on the thumbdrive, which looked like it would install Windows but failed. Will a set of recovery disks give me everything I need to install Windows? Or would it be easier to save the recovery disks to the external HD and boot from there? And will that be everything I need to install to an HD with nothing on it? Thanks again.

saints · 05 Jan 2011

So in summary, is the system recovery cd or thumbdrive all you need to install windows 7? Or do I have to do a complete system image?

Ztruker · 05 Jan 2011

The recovery discs will be DVDs and there are usually two or three of them. I've never seen them created to a USB flash drive. Go ahead and create the set of DVDs then you will have all you need to reinstall Win 7 on the new hard drive.

It would be simpler and faster though to image the current drive to your new external drive then swap drives and restore it. Additionally, you would not lose any data which you will do if you install using the recovery discs.

Edit: Did the new 350GB WD drive come with a CD? If so you may be able to use it to clone the existing drive to the new one. Just install the new drive along with the existing drive and boot the CD.

See here: Acronis True Image WD Edition Software

Acronis True Image WD Edition Software

Acronis True Image WD Edition Software helps you to completely clone your current system drive onto your new WD hard drive. Cloning makes an exact copy of your old system drive on your new WD hard drive, including the operating system, applications, data, preferences, and email settings. Everything will be present and operate exactly as it did on your old hard drive. Acronis True Image WD Edition now supports WD Advanced Format Drives and ensures that all partitions are optimally aligned.

You can download it from the above link if there was no CD.

saints · 05 Jan 2011

Thanks for the replys. The new internal HD did not come with any software. I used the thumbdrive to save the HP recovery software, but I'm unable to get it to load on the new HD. Thanks for reccommending the program for cloning. I'm currently using Macrium to try and clone the HD. Hopefully that will work. It seems like a lot of work just to get an OS on an HD.

Once cloned to the external HD, I should be able to install the new internal HD and have windows load, correct? Then I can move files off of the external HD to the new internal HD?

Thanks for the advice.

DocBrown · 05 Jan 2011

What version of x64, Home Prem, Prof, Ultimate ?

Does you HP laptop have a DVD R/W drive ?

saints · 05 Jan 2011

I'm currently running windows 7 home premium. Yes I do have a cd/dvd drive.

DocBrown · 05 Jan 2011

I have not used Macrium, but I would think that it probably has you make a boot disc to get the image from an external HD.

whs's tutorial

Imaging with free Macrium

saints · 05 Jan 2011

I feel like a tool. It looks like the thumbdrive copy was bad, so when I reloaded it installed Windows. I still used the external HD to store some things not originally shipped with the pc, so buying it wasn't a complete waste. Thanks for the advice, and for future reference it can be done from a thumbdrive as long as the copy of the recovery software is good :)