New harddrive. Do i need windows disc?

[DrRight]

I have a HP Pavilion dv7 laptop and recently the hard drive failed...

It was running windows 7 home basic 64 bit and did not come with the recovery discs.

im going to buy a new harddrive soon to replace it and was wondering what discs do i need to get my system running again?

A family member has the same exact computer and i made a recovery disk from the control panel off of it. can i use this disc to install windows or anything? i dont really want to buy the disc set from hp beause i dont want all the extra programs but if i have to ill choose that over a $100 windows 7 disc..

[Scolton]

Define "Hard Disk Failure". If it is not too bad, you can buy a kit that will allow you to connect the drive to a usb port and copy everything from that drive to the new one. (You will need two kits to do that)

[DrRight]

Its toast.. I've been having problems with it for a while and it finally croaked... i don't need anything on it because i save everything important on my external harddrive..

i scanned the hard drive with the bios tests and the hp tests and all of them came up with  disc failure. "please   contact hp for replacement" but its out of warranty.

[Scolton · Accepted solution]

Yeah, you are going to need a Windows Install disc. However, there may be a way to restore from the System image of the other computer that you have, that you say is the same. I will get back to you on how to do that later.

You may also use the recovery disc you created from that computer.  If it really is the exact same.  I am not sure of the legality of that, but...

[DrRight]

Ok. And i know they are the same because they were bought at the same time during a sale...

what is the recovery disk that you can make used for? when i tried that  it seemed like the same thing as the hp recovery program but it could not repair the hard drive

[Scolton]

What it does is reinstall the operating system. You will only be able to use it when you get a new hard disk.

[DrRight]

oh so can i just use that when i get the new hard drive to have a fresh install of windows and then download the drivers for the laptop from the internet?

[Scolton]

No. You won't need to install drivers. It has a custom version of Windows for that laptop that will come with the drivers already on it! Neat, huh?

Kudos<----------------------------------------

[DrRight]

oh that's handy... OK ill do that then... would it be possible to plug the failed hard dive into a desktop and format it or is it not repairable?

[Scolton]

I mean, unless you are able to open the hard disk cover and jumble around in there and possibly destroy the disk even more, not to mention voiding your warranty, no. It is not fixable.