Hi
I changed my dell inspiron n4020 HDD to a new one because it gets in windows 7 start up repair loop. I decided to keep the old one as external disc. But the problem is I didn't find my recovery disk to reinstall my laptop as it came from factory. Is there a way to do that using my old HDD as external (the disk is working and has the recovery partition)?
Thanks
All OEM computers has a Factory recover partition.
Is the new HDD bigger than the original?
Using a Linux boot able flash disk you can clone the original disk to the new one, disconnect the original disk and then launch the Factory Recover on the new disk from BIOS.
BEWARE: Factory recover formats the C: partition so you will loose a your data on that disk.
With your old drive (the one with the recovery partition) as the Windows drive, boot into Windows and see if you have the option to create a set of Factory Reset DVDs.
Once you have a set of Factory Reset DVDs, you can remove the old drive and install the new drive, then do a Factory Reset to the new drive.
I solved the problem. Clone the OS to the new drive with all the partitions except the big data one. The disk don't boot. But I use command prompt to make it active, change the disk to MBR, changed the BCD, ect and suddenly windows boot with errors but f8 works and I select last good configuration and windows started. I really don't know what I did but it works. Guess what is the first thing I am doing? Create system recovery disc again!!! And be extremely sure I don't loose again.
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