New HDD: moving over lenovo recovery partition

[Synthetickiller]

I'm getting a 500gb drive on monday and plan on doing a fresh install of Win 7 pro x64. I already own a licence for it through lenovo.

Which option is better?

Allow the thinkvantage rescue and recovery to do a full restore... then clone the drive with norton ghost.

OR

Do a fresh install, then install all the proper drivers from lenovo directly?

I do like the Rescue and Recovery parition, although its no necessary. I can live without it, but would rather have it if at all possible.

[Harryc]

If you have the full W7 recovery CD set from Lenovo that would be a better option because Lenovo included optimizations in that package that are only available in it.

[Synthetickiller]

I don't unfortunately. It didn't come with my laptop. Not sure why.

[Harryc]

Well, if the recovery partition is W7, then that would be the same thing...and you should be able to make your own recovery discs from it.

[GomJabbar]

You used to be able to burn your own set "one time" (not sure about the latest ThinkPads). Look under ThinkVantage from the Start menu for recovery media or product recovery. Rescue media allows you to boot into Rescue and Recovery. Recovery Media or Product Recovery runs a program to burn a recovery set to restore Factory Contents. If things haven't changed, you can use a CD or DVD for the first disk and a DVD or several CD's for the remaining disks. The first disk is the same as the Rescue Media CD.

If you do burn a set of these disks and use them, know that you need to "Restore Factory Contents" twice. The first time the data is written from the disks to your hard drive. After installing from the disks, you have to Restore Factory Contents again from the Recovery Partition on your hard drive for Windows to be installed. You will go through several reboots.

[Synthetickiller]

I get my new hdd on Monday. I'll see what I can do and keep you guys posted.