Do the recovery discs work on a new hard drive?

[R4000]

I just ordered my HP lappy this morning with the cheapest hard drive, so when I get it I will burn the recovery discs. My plan is to immediately put in a new unformatted 7200.1 Seagate and let the recovery discs install everything to factory once again. Can this be done?

If it matters, the factory hard drive is 80GB and the replacement will be 100GB (as I don't know if the size difference will mess up the "recovery").

Thanks,

Mike

[Redneck_Randy]

Yes, the restore disk will work on another hard drive.

Randy

[kickace]

you really dont want to use the restore disks, i would do a fresh install because HP and all manufacturers but ALOT of crap on there computers - it will run much faster with a fresh clean install

[Sid1]

yup the recovery discs will work

[R4000]

you really dont want to use the restore disks, i would do a fresh install because HP and all manufacturers but ALOT of crap on there computers - it will run much faster with a fresh clean install

If I get mine with the Anytime Upgrade DVD, I might go the clean install route instead (or buy oem Vista Premium from NewEgg).

Anyway, I have a while to wait reguardless. My lappy is not estimated to ship until July 19th.

[Fant]

Question...is the recovery partition equivalent to the recovery discs? IE: Can one restore their system from either the recovery partition OR the recovery discs? Or are both needed?

[R4000]

From my understanding, if you have the recovery discs then you can delete the recovery partition to save space.

[kubel]

Either should work, only one is needed for restoration.

[Sid1]

I created the recovery dvd's after i got my 6500t. Then, I formatted the entire hdd and installed xp pro, and also got rid of the recovery partition. Today, I needed something from the SWSETUP folder and realized that the files I had backed up had become corrupted, so I used the recovery discs to restore my 6500t to vista. What I noticed was that the recovery discs also re-create the recovery partiton apart from putting the system back to how it was when I first turned it on.