Upgrading HDD on Asus F5VL

New here, so hi everybody..

I ran into some trouble the other day with my notebook - after the touchpad stopped working, I rebooted many times (moving around with the tab key etc. into the settings etc.) with no success, until thenotebook stopped booting proper altogether, asking me for some boot cd or something (can't remember exactly.)

Well.. it was time for a fresh reinstall anyway (hadn't performed one since i bought it in early 2008) so I got a new HD (a WD 320 Gb as opposed to the original hitachi 160Gb) put it in and was ready for a reinstall with the 2 recovery cds that were provided with the notebook when I bought it.

And that's where I run into problems : I am asked if I want to recover to the whole drive or on a partition (I have tried whole drive/two partitions), then to (a)ccept, then if I'm ready to recover (Y/N) - which I answer with Y twice (obviously.) Then it displays the message "Recovering now" for as long as i keep the machine on, WHILE NOTHING HAPPENS - the little HD LED doesn't even light up anymore after this point.

Also, I tried formatting this new drive as an external one to make sure nothing was faulty with it, and it works fine; I also checked in the setup to see if it was detected, which it is as well.

The guys at the shop that sold me the laptop suggest me to get a new windows XP license in case the recovery cds would be specifically aimed at the original drive; I tried talking to people at the ASUS hotline, but that was pretty useless, as they don't even want to hear of trying to upgrade the machine, and were very unsupportive altogether. They sort of hinted at the fact that maybe *this* specific HD was not supported.

If I have to, I'm willing to get another drive or license, but isn't there a way around this ? I would rather avoid getting back the original HD back in, as this would require me to do a full back up of the data (and always wonder if I haven't missed something crucial on the way.)

Thank you in advance,

R.R.



PS One message displayed during the process too is : "This will help you restore pre-installed software to its factory state." Wouldn't that hint at the fact that the recovery cds could only be used in conjunction with the original HD ?

I tried formatting it as an external drive, through another computer.

If by "through the XP installer", you mean, "in the process of getting XP reinstalled on the new drive", it doesn't offer me the option to do it, so no, i didn't.

What i noticed in the meantime, though, is that the original HD is partitioned in 3 - the first partition (about 4 gigs) is named "recovery" and does NOT have a drive letter. I got aware of this through the "drive management" utility of windows, while i had it plugged as an external drive.

So what i guess is that the recovery CDs i have work only in conjunction with what's on that partition ?

And now the question would be : how can i access the contents on this partition, since they do NOT appear on the explorer, so as to transfer them onto the new drive i would want installed instead of the original one ?

..and thank you anyway !

Thanks for the tip - it's just I'm totally unfamiliar with Linux, so i don't know if i'd make it through.

Isn't there any way to allot it a drive letter through the windows disk management utility, copy it on an external drive then, and then de-letter it ?

Or something that would allow me to copy the whole of my original 160 Gb drive to the new 320, hidden partition and all ? This way, i'd delete all that's on the explicit partition (C and D) and boot from the windows XP recovery cds ?

I hear you, but the question is : will my recovery cds be able to use that "hidden" partition again once it's got a drive letter assigned to it. Or maybe : how can I make it letter-less again once I've copied it onto the other HDD, so that the recovery cds can access it ?

It's just I would hate to have it copied somewhere, and at the same time, be unable to access it anymore..

Hey !

Thanks a lot for your reply ! In the meantime, the problem got kinda resolved, and the laptop is working again.

I pretty much did what you're advising here (using another program though - would have to look it up.) Then I had everything backed up, tried the recovery on the 320gb HD with the unlettered partition copied on it. And it still didn't work, so I also backed up all the data from the original HD, and was ready to use it and have everything erased etc.

Still didn't work, so I caved in and brought it back to the shop where I had gotten it from, since it was still under guarantee - where they reinstalled it from another set of cds. Said that mine were probably not good, and that they had a hard time reinstalling from the cd-drive as well. So now it's a matter of whether I have ASUS checking it or not - guess it will be "not", given all the time I lost on the way.

But like I said, thank you again

Guys at the shop reinstalled windows XP from their own set of cds, and I had them doing on the new HD rather than on the old one. It's as if i would not even have stood a chance, if, as they tell, my recovery cds were bad to begin with.

I'm still very frustrated with the whole operation, because 1/ it really took ages doing the various back-ups and getting mentally prepared to wiping off the original drive (i know, pathetic, i'm totally OCD on that kinda stuff) and 2/ even when i was ready to do it, it wouldn't work and i had to wait for 3/ someone else to do it (while i've been using computers for decades now, and i always managed to do my own maintenance/recovery..)

The software I was using was Easus Partition Master, and I've been very happy with it on the way, though

I pressed all sorts of F keys - can't swear I tried that one, but if I did, then it didn't work... thank you anyway

.. but sys files were foobared so maybe that's why it didn't work ?