HP Cloud Recovery Tool shows no HDD

[US_Water]

The 256 GB HDD on this laptop got filled up.  Purchased and installed a new 1 TB hard drive.  Used the cloud recovery tool to configure a USB drive to install preinstalled software on the new hard drive.  USB boots fine but always says there is no HDD in the laptop.

BIOS shows the new 1 TB drive without issues.  Running diagnostics on the HDD shows no errors.  Why does the cloud recovery tool not see the new hard drive?  Need to be able to use this utility to get the machine back to preinstalled software so files can be restored from backup.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

I'm surprised the cloud recovery tool does not contain the Intel storage controller drivers that are needed for Windows to find the drive.

Are you given an option to install any drivers at the point were no drive is found?

If not, you are going to have to clean install Windows on the drive.

Make a bootable USB installation flash drive with the Media creation tool from the link below:

Download Windows 11

I have zipped up and attached the Intel storage controller drivers, below.

The attached file is good for both W10 & W11.

Copy all of the files in both folders in the attached file to a USB flash drive.

Have the flash drive and your Windows installation media plugged into USB ports.

Boot from the W11 installation flash drive.

When you get to the screen where no drives can be found, click on the Load driver option, browse to the flash drive with the storage controller drivers on it.

If you check the box, it will only include the compatible driver.

Click Next, and W11 should install.

If your notebook came with a 256 GB NVMe SSD, your other option would be to buy a USB3/USB-C to NVMe SSD enclosure, plug the 256 GB drive in the enclosure and clone the 256 GB drive's contents to the larger drive.

Amazon.com: SSK Aluminum M.2 NVME SATA SSD Enclosure Adapter, USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) to NVME PCI-E ...

If you bought a Samsung drive, you can use the Samsung Magician software to do that.

If you bought another brand SSD, you can use the 30 Day Macrium reflect trial software to clone the drive.

Macrium Reflect Home | The complete backup solution for personal use.

Watch this video for how to clone a smaller drive to a larger one:

Cloning a disk using Macrium Reflect 8

[US_Water]

HP provides a solution to reinstall all of the software that was sold with the laptop, but they don't provide a way to use it?  This doesn't make any sense.  When running the software to create the bootable USB, it requires the model number of the laptop.  Why would they not provide all the drivers to successfully boot and reinstall their software?

There is not option to load drivers on boot.  A box pops up and says that the HDD is not found.  All that can be done is to press enter to close the message and then the laptop shuts down.  Reinstalling Windows from scratch won't really be an option, either, as there is no license key anywhere on the laptop to activate Windows since it came preinstalled.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

The windows product key is encrypted in the BIOS of the notebook and is not needed to reinstall Windows.

Windows will detect the product key and activate after you are connected to the internet.

Microsoft has required all PC manufacturers to encrypt the Windows product keys in the PC's BIOS' since Windows 8 came out in 2012.

 Since I don't work for or represent HP, I can't answer any of your questions regarding why the storage controller drivers weren't included, but I do agree that it doesn't make any sense, as the recovery media is useless without the storage controller drivers that are required for all PC's with Intel 11th generation or newer core processors.

I suggest you use the cloning method so that you have what originally came with your notebook, but clean installing W11 is also an option.

Apparently, getting the recovery media to work is not an option.  Not without the storage controller drivers.