New Hard drive, New Operating System needed?

[Chippy1]

Hi Just wondering if anyone can help.

I have recently just purchased a new hard drive for my acer laptop, the only problem is Windows Vista was pre-installed on the laptop when I bought it.

I did make "acer e-recovery" optical disks when I first setup but will these disks be able to install vista fully on the new hard drive or will a new operating system be needed?

Somebody told me that the recovery disks can only restore the factory image using the original hard drive that created them, due to the image been stored on that drive.


Any help would be greatly appreciated,


Thanks

[Wolfeymole]

Hello Chippy

Who ever told you the information in your last paragraph was quite correct.
What you could try and even this may not work is to ghost the entire os on to that new drive.
The problem you may encounter is on boot up when, and I'm assuming Vista operates along the same lines as XP when it comes to hardware changes, it does not recognise the new hdd with the original system specification.
I find it quite a disgusting practice to supply only a recovery disk as against a full on copy or OEM version of Vista should you ever wish to do a re-install.

[Chippy1]

Yeah, thanks for the reply wolfeymole.

I'm not a technical expert so I don't know how much success I would have ghosting the os onto the new drive.

I might just purchase xp and start from scratch.

You are absolutely right though about them not supplying original disks anymore when purchasing. I believe this was a new thing when Microsoft brought out vista to stop lending/copying etc... Also a lot of manufacturers are doing the same with new systems, just using e-recovery programme's instead of supplying disks.


Thanks for your answer : )

[vehelpfulguy]

Phone Acer and tell them your original hard drive has crashed and you have had to buy a new hard disk.

Ask them to send you a recovery CD.

[Wolfeymole]

Again that won't work VHGuy as all recovery disks will be based on the assumption that nothing has been changed.

Acer would have to configure a new recovery disk based on the original mobo spec plus the details for the new hdd.

I don't think so.

You could try for nothing Chippy but I don't hold much hope.
To be perfectly honest also I don't rate Visa at the moment, too many bugs and flaws but if the laptop is designed solely for Vista then you have obviously no choice.

[ACtheTROLL]

I'm a little slow here

If your laptop came with vista ... it must surely still be in warranty (?) Why the new HDD?

As to will it or won't it .... how about trying it.
If it's out of the box ... worst that can happen is it won't work ... and you have to re-format.

Part of the OEM thing is that you can only swap certain components or windows sees itself being on a "new" machine - you might be lucky!

If the new HDD is simply to give you extra storage ... how about restoring the original disc ....

and put the new disc into an external 2.5" usb enclosure (they are self powered, pocket sized ... and can be very cheap
http://www.ebest24.co.uk/products/computer-net working/super-slim-25-inch-usb2011-aluminium-h ard-disk-drive-caseenclosure.html.