HP Recovery DVD/USB Creation

[mcquaim]

Hi folks,

A mate gave me his HP Pavilion dv5 laptop to look at cos Windows 7 wouldn't boot for him.

I had a look and it looks like his HDD is toast, keeps throwing "Data Cyclic Errors".. Anyway, of course he didn't create any recovery media so I'm wondering if I can manually create it?

Recently on a Toshiba laptop I was able to do this, I copied the content from the recovery partition onto a USB and then I was able to boot from the USB to install windows onto a new WD drive.

BTW, both HDD's are Toshiba drives, they must be pants.. This is the 4th laptop in the last year that I've been looking at where a Toshiba HDD has failed!

Anyway, anyone know if the above is possible?

Also, if that is not possible then can a recovery USB from another HP laptop be used to reinstall windows on this one? I'm doubtful as the Win7 product key must be embedded as I don't think it asks you this when you recover these laptops..

My last resort is fresh install Win7 with my install DVDs using the product keys on the bottom of his laptop! I'd rather try and get it back as it was originally anyway if possible..

Thanks,
mcquaim

[judge]

Try booting from USB and using something like GParted Live,

http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=gparted
Saying that, I'm still trying to recover the 1TB HDD that my TM Twin killed when it died...

[mcquaim]

Cheers!

I have NTFS recovery software and I was able to get his personal data off the banjaxed HDD but to recover the Lappy to factory settings I'm not sure how to go about it!

What exactly does GParted Live do?

I might try creating a recovery USB on another HP laptop to see what files are created and the folder layout and then try to manually copy the same files from the fecked HDD and see if I can manually create one if possible...

[judge]

GParted should fix messed up partitions & let you copy data off them.
Whatever the Twin did to my HDD, I'm having little luck with it though...

[mcquaim]

GParted should fix messed up partitions & let you copy data off them.
Whatever the Twin did to my HDD, I'm having little luck with it though...

I might give it a try, wonder would it manage to fix it up enough to boot windows or the recovery..

I will try tomorrow, thanks man!

[judge]

I've managed to save all user data off various family members messed up laptops by using a live Ubuntu boot USB.
Won't help recover the OS though, but atleast they get their pictures, videos & other bits back.

[mcquaim]

I've managed to save all user data off various family members messed up laptops by using a live Ubuntu boot USB.
Won't help recover the OS though, but atleast they get their pictures, videos & other bits back.

Ah pity, I was hoping it might do some error recovery on the actual partition or something! I have all his data already off the HDD using Disk Doctors NTFS recovery software, works a treat for me..

Back to my other options in original post so!!

[pooface]

When I've created recovery disks from hp before, it's used some software by cybermedia iirc to create the DVD/usb media...

Personally, I prefer to reinstall a fresh. Saves all the crap software hp put on from being installed ... I use volume media, and embed the hp (or whichever other manufacture) machine slp key.

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