Failed drive which contains recovery

[GregD1]

When booting the hard drive light just stops and everything freezes. I tried system restore multiple times with no luck. I can run in safe mode.

 I ran the hard drive tests on both drives. When testing the main drive the test ran for a few seconds and failed saying to replace the drive. The second drive passed with no problems.  The recovery files are on the main drive. Can I order a new drive with the recovery files on it?

[WAWood · Accepted solution]

GregD1

Wish I had good news for you, but I do not.

All that HP makes available is something known as HP Recovery Media.  This is a set of DVDs and a CD, or USB stick, that will erase the hard drive (removing all data, settings, and applications, reinstall the original OS, drivers, and some HP Utilities. In some cases, you may be able to order a USB stick instead of disks.  You have to order these from HP; they can not be downloaded.

They do not provide hard drives with stuff already preloaded.

Even then, HP does not stock the Vista recovery media any longer, so you would have to check these other sites to see if they still carry it: http://www.computersurgeons.com/  and http://www.restoredisks.com/

Good Luck
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[GregD1]

Hi

Thank you for your reply, that's what I was afraid of. Would you by chance know if this computer can support a larger main drive? It is an HP Pavillion DV9700.

Once again, Thank You

[WAWood]

The maintenance manual lists replacement drives up to 200GB.  But, since the BIOS limit on older PCs is 120GB, this can probably handle 500GB or larger.

But don't get anything bigger than 1TB because larger than that, you're getting into GPT formatting -- and Vista can't understand that formatting.

Good Luck
========================================================================
I am a volunteer and I do not work for, nor do I represent, HP.
---------------------------------------------------------------
If my posts helped you, please click the Thumbs-Up symbol on my post to say thanks.
If my posts solved your problem please click "Accept As Solution".
========================================================================