Swap Hard Drive but only Restore Disc - Not WinXP

I have a Fujitsu Lifebook S7010 (with a 60GB 4200 RPM drive) which I'm now upgrading to a 120GB 8200RPM WD drive.

The drive should arrive on Monday and shouldn't be too hard to install, but Fujitsu ships with a "Restore Disc" - I can't tell if its a Windows Install Disc or an image restore. If it is an image restore, will it matter that my new drive is a different capacity from the old one? If it does matter, can I use another Windows install disc and my license key?

Thanks.

 

There should be a recovery cd making program installed on your computer. This will allow you to make your own recovery cds with OS. Then after you install your new hard drive, put your disk 1 in the cd rom and reboot, choosing to boot from your cd. This will start the recovery process. I would also backup all your saved data to a cd. Another option is to purchase a 2.5" USB enclosure for your new drive. Get Norton ghost or Acronis drive image and make an image onto your new drive. Then swap out the drives. You should now have your new drive installed and you can use your old drive in your enclosure to backup onto. Good Luck

 

I don't want to make a backup of the whole drive - the whole idea is to start from scratch and not continue with the mess I have on my hard drive as of now. Just a fresh install of windows.

 

If all you have is 1 restore disk, odds are good that this is your OS disk. An image restore will likely require 3 or more disks.

 

It's a DVD that seems to have about 2.5 GB of image files on it. I'm pretty sure it's the factory status disc - but the question is will it restore onto a drive that is a different size. Right now (on a 60GB, it has 2 partitions, with one being a half gig one for a restore). When I swap the drive - it will be brand new with no partitions and will be double the size. So do you think the DVD will be able to restore to this new drive?

Thanks a lot for your help.

 

most definately, since your saying it has about 2.5g on it, then I'm sure its the complete restore option that will reinstall it back to the state that it was in when you purchased it. If you dont want any of the programs afterwards, use add/remove programs to remove them. Good Luck

BTW, what are your plans with your old hard drive?

 

Ah. That sounds good. I hope they don't have some sort of limitation that allows it to restore only to a specific size HDD (and recreate partitions only for that size). It's unlikely but who knows. I shall find out tomorrow when the new drive arrives and I can install it.

I think I'm going to buy an enclosure from newegg.com and use it as a backup drive (even though i already have an external 250GB).