Will recovery disks work on my new hard drive

[nothingmuch]

Would my full model number be Hp Pavillion Dv4-2049us or some other thing?

I have some pictures of my hard drive that I am trying to take out...

In the red, is that the adapter you were talking about?

For this picture, in the outlined red circle, I am assuming this is the tab and for that white triangle, was i supposed to slide or what you said, pull out?

[nothingmuch]

Haggiscat,

http://h20574.www2.hp.com/results.htm?SID=4031721&MEID=B3FACFDC-3706-4C68-AD7D-4502DB5C2A91

and under the hard disk drive section

I saw a picture of the hard disk drive and it seems that the metal thing I circled was probably not the mylar tab

The problem is, I do not see any other Mylar tab on my drive. Did it not come with one? Is it under that big piece of black plastic with the white triangle?

[HaggisCat]

  What has to be done is to slide the hard drive body away from the edge of the laptop to unplug it from the mother board. Then the edge that was plugged in to the MB has to be lifted up and then out of the hard drive bay. It looks like the mylar tab is missing, so you will have to use your finger tips or blunt edge of some sort to unplug it from the MB.

 The link I gave you should have taken you to a selection of video's, did you get that far ?

 Here is a more direct link, make sure you are signed in before clicking on the link.

 http://h20574.www2.hp.com/results.htm?SID=4031721&MEID=5AEA0E15-8D88-4CB2-A396-A59D2A8088B1

 Give the page a while to load, it will stay a blank white page for while. Navigate to the Hard Disk Drive (CSR) in the left column.

[nothingmuch]

Since it's getting late, I will try this tomorrow

Hopefully, I can push down slightly on the sides of the Hard drive and somehow slide it out.

I will keep you posted on if it works or not:smileyhappy:

[HaggisCat]

It will take a fair amount of pressure, the SATA plug is in there quite well.

[nothingmuch]

Hey, it's me again

I have just took out the old hard drive (Took a while to remove it without the mylar tab)

and replaced it with the new 320gb hard drive.

So all I have to do now is boot up the computer, insert my 3 recovery cd's I made, follow the on screen instructions  and it should work like new?

[HaggisCat · Accepted solution]

Not quite, what you have to do is open the DVD/CD drawer while the laptop is on, leave the drawer open and shut down.

 Insert your first recovery DVD and close the drawer.

Upon boot up look for a message at the lower bottom left of the screen that says "Press the esc key for start up options" do this and you will have a number of choices. Navigate to f9 and press enter.

 Choose to boot from internal DVD/CD ROM Drive and push enter.

That will now boot into your first recovery DVD. It will automatically eject when finished and ask for the other two.

 You could also simply start tapping the f9 key upon boot up, this will also get you to the correct window.

[nothingmuch]

Ahh.. Thanks for everything HaggisCat and DavidPK 

I have installed the hard drive, used the recovery cds, and my computer is good as new!

I wouldn't have found out without you guys!

[HaggisCat]

Something else to do. According to your spec's you are running Windows 7.

 http://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c02036163

 After the install is complete and you have added all your personal items, settings and updates, W7 has a program that mirror images the hard drive. These DVD's can also be used to reinstall the OS at the time of creation.

 This is found in the control panel under "Backup and Restore" In the left column you will find this option. There is also a choice to make a "System Repair Disc" this is a bootable DVD and has to be used to reinstall the system image.

 These disc's are extremely useful if you get a nasty virus.

[Greg_White]

Hello ladies & gentlemen

I have a laptop (my daughters) and it would appear the HDD is dead - ran all internal diags which did not recognise the HDD nor does the BIOS - I asked my daughter for the recovery discs and she had no clue as to what I was talking about. So I think my position is I have a dead HDD without recovery discs.

Now I can acquire a drive easily enough, I am figuring on upgrading her machine to 500gb - but the point which is probably already obvious is the OS - I would suggest I need to download Vista off the MS site if it is still available and use the key I found on the back of her laptop, download and install all the drivers I can find off the HP site I can find and I should be back in business - anyone see anything wrong with my thoughts ?

Thanks in advance

Best regards