Corrupt hard drive on a dv2000 series notebook.

[KBIII]

The original hard drive in my dv2025nr became corrupt recently. I am out of warranty, so I bought a replacement hard drive and ordered a recovery disk.

The new hard drive is exactly the same as the original, WD Scorpio, but is 40gb larger. I am waiting on the recovery disk still, but I just read a post stating that for a recovery disk to work on a replaced hard drive, the HD must be 'tattooed' by HP or an authorized service provider. And apparently I am just now reading the motherboard needs the same treatment?

My questions are: Will I need my old hard drive? It is corrupt and won't pass the self-test. And how easy is this whole process of having it tattooed?

I am wondering why this wasn't mentioned when I bought the recovery disk.   

Any help would be much appreciated. 

[Huffer]

There has been a lot of loose talk here about the subject. The only time you have to "tattoo" is when you replace the motherboard, and frankly I have replaced several motherboards in dv2000, dv6000 and dv9000 laptops and never had to tattoo anything as long as it is replaced with a motherboard of the same part number. We just had a big smackdown callout on this very issue in the "Super User" part of this Forum where I asked HP to go on the record and answer whether you can buy a new retail hard drive and use the factory recovery disk or one made by the end user from the HP recovery program on the laptop. There had been some misinformation here along the lines of what you suggest. HP officially disclaimed that incorrect advice and said I was right: you can install any compatible hard drive and recover the system from the recovery disks (assuming they are not themselves corrupted). HP committed that they sent a memo to Customer Service telling the reps not to suggest otherwise on the phone. You can feel free to take advantage of the market and find your best deal on a hard drive and restore your system to that drive.