Hard drive replacement & recovery disks

[Charles Krug]

A T42 2378-DUU was returned to me with a broken 40Gb drive -- it is totally inaccessible. Would like to build a new drive, including the service partition. No recovery disks had been created for this PC, but we do have an identical machine in good health.
Questions:
Can the new drive be built using recovery disks made from the healthy PC?
If so, does the new drive need to be identical to the original?
Finally, will the recovery process prompt for the Windows product key belonging to the broken PC?
If this route isn't workable, will look to cloning.
Thanks!
Jim

[richk]

Are you talking rescue and recovery or fractory restorer CDs?

[Reo51St]

During the recovery process, all data saved on all partitions of the hard disk will be deleted, including any personal data and configuration settings. If possible, copy any personal files that you want to keep onto removable media or network drive before you start recovery process.

Rescue and Recovery CD’s provides tools that enable you to transfer files to removable media or network drives, even if you cannot start Windows.

As far as building Recovery CD’s with another laptop and using them on another one it might work as long as they are part of the group of laptops that use that recovery???

Recovery CD’s P/N 24R7859 cover R51,T42, T42p Type 1829, 1830, 1831, 1836, 1840, 1841, 2373, 2374, 2378 and 2379.

The Rescue and Recovery with Rapid Restore is P/N 19R9174.

During recovery it does not ask for key code#.

P/N 24R7859 and P/N 19R9174 can be purchased on EBay for $25-$35 for the set.

Good luck.

[Charles Krug]

I'm referring to the factory restorer CDs created from the second machine. The two PCs are identical (almost consecutive serial numbers). Just didn't know if the restorer utility would expect the same 40Gb drive (as long as we're getting a new drive, might as well go with more capacity). Also, didn't want to run into any problems with the XP activation key. Thanks,
Jim