"Operating system not found"

[Goldeneye]

Hello! Well, the hard-drive on my laptop died (it was displaying "SMART failure prediction -- Hard-disk Drive dailure might be imminant).

So I took it out and hooked it up to an external enclosure and copied all the files (system files and personal files, hidden and visible) off of it to another computer.

After that, I went and bought a new hard-drive. My previous hard-drive was a 250-GB 5400-RPM Western Digital. The new hard-drive is a 500-GB 7200-RPM Western Digital.

So I placed the new harddrive in the external enclosure and copied all the files I had copied off my dying harddrive on to it (my new harddrive). I placed it back into my laptop and booted it up.

I was expecting it to work when it said, "operating system not found". I rebooted again and brought up the Bootable-Devices menu and sure enough my new harddrive isn't even listed on there. Although, it doesn't detect it as a bootable device, the BIOS does detect the new harddrive (as I am running the BIOS' drive-diagnostics-program on it now which is almost complete). So I'm not sure what is going on.

I should mention that while backing up my files, I had no trouble getting all the files off my dying harddrive with the exception of a few (non-system) files associated with a Virtual Machine I had.

So I suppose my question is: How can I get the BIOS to detect the harddrive as a bootable device?

 

[zigzag3143]

Hello! Well, the hard-drive on my laptop died (it was displaying "SMART failure prediction -- Hard-disk Drive dailure might be imminant).

So I took it out and hooked it up to an external enclosure and copied all the files (system files and personal files, hidden and visible) off of it to another computer.

After that, I went and bought a new hard-drive. My previous hard-drive was a 250-GB 5400-RPM Western Digital. The new hard-drive is a 500-GB 7200-RPM Western Digital.

So I placed the new harddrive in the external enclosure and copied all the files I had copied off my dying harddrive on to it (my new harddrive). I placed it back into my laptop and booted it up.

I was expecting it to work when it said, "operating system not found". I rebooted again and brought up the Bootable-Devices menu and sure enough my new harddrive isn't even listed on there. Although, it doesn't detect it as a bootable device, the BIOS does detect the new harddrive (as I am running the BIOS' drive-diagnostics-program on it now which is almost complete). So I'm not sure what is going on.

I should mention that while backing up my files, I had no trouble getting all the files off my dying harddrive with the exception of a few (non-system) files associated with a Virtual Machine I had.

So I suppose my question is: How can I get the BIOS to detect the harddrive as a bootable device?

Does the new HD have a drive letter? Was it formatted before installation?

 

[Goldeneye]

Yes, I initialized and formatted the new harddrive before attempting to boot from it. However, it's still giving the error.

Update
I have found the culprit of the problem. It was a rookie mistake on my part since I didn't realize that I had neglected to copy the boot-sector over from my old harddrive to my new harddrive. Is there any way to copy the bootsector over?

 

[SIW2]

You can write it from the dvd - boot it up - go to repair my computer - command prompt, type:

diskpart

lis vol

(make a note of drive letter for your win 7 partition - replace ? below with it )

sel vol ?

act

exi

bootsect /nt60 all

bcdboot ?:\windows /s ?: