CD eRestoring to larger disk after drive failure - new drive prep needed?

burgess40

Want to make sure I have the process down before I start...

 

My Acer Aspire AX1301-U1302 small form factor desktop (windows 7) hard disk failed over a 5 minute period yesterday. I cannot boot to windows. (I assume the disk is done - data recovery is a different issue).

 

I have a set of recovery disks and driver disk I made when I first unpacked the computer and started it up.

 

I pulled out the disk (750GB Seagate Barracuda SATA 7200.12).

I bought a 2TB Seagate Barracuda SATA disk.

 

My next steps:

1) install the new disk physically and seal up the machine.

2) turn on

3) go into setup

4) make sure optical drive boot is selected

5) Put the first recovery disk in the optical drive

6) let the computer boot off the CD

7) Follow the instructions from the recovery disks 

 

Questions:

1) Do I have to partition or format or prepare the new disk in any way before the above process (ie create a partition or something)?

2) Do the recovery disks work on a larger disk than the OEM?

3) Have I missed anything else?

 

Thanks

burgess40

Problem solved.

Despite no clear answer to to questions of formatting and partitioning with a new drive as I asked above from either Acer or Google search, the install went smoothly. The virgin replacement drive was automatically partitioned and formatted by the recovery software with no user intervention.

The hardest part was pushing the DVD open button at the right time so i could insert the recovery disk...

As in the initial post, i opened the case and pulled out the bad 750gb drive. I took the new 2T Seagate barracuda and hooked it up just as the old drive had been - no need to change jumpers or anything. Powered on. No need to change the bios or boot order as default next boot source is CD/DVD if primary disk won't boot. Message came up "boot from atapi CD..." But then it dumped to trying a network boot as i hadn't gotten a chance to put the first recovery disk in and thus there was no CD/DVD in the drive. Rebooted a couple of times, hitting the DVD open button like mad until it opened at the right time and i could put the disk in.

Once in the Optical drive and booting, The Acer Windows 7 recovery disk recognized the new 2T drive with no problem, asked me what type of restore I wanted (os only versus whole disk - i said full disk), formatted and partitioned the new disk silently (no message about formatting or partitioning came up at all, not even status - no prompts, no questions, no other software needed) and began to install windows 7. I followed the instructions, kept feeding in the 3 CD's as they were asked for and finally had a working windows 7 system.

All in all, getting from a failed hard drive to a fresh windows 7 installation was painless. Now if i can only figure out how to use Acronis/seagate diskwizard and Recuva to get key files off the failed drive...