Need to restore OS & s/w to new HDD

[JMac1727]

The HDD in my TX3 has died in spectacular fashion leaving me needing to install a new HDD. Before I have a go at this myself I need to understand if it is possible to use the recovery disks & / or clean install instructions on a clean HDD, ie a drive that does not have a recovery partition.

Sony support have been a bit vague and said it might not work with the recovery disks I have.

Has anyone put a new drive in and then got it up and running with recovery partition functionality?

PS. ftr, I'm looking at doing it myself as I have warned it will be minimum charge of £180 for Sony to put new drive in and install clean OS & utilities!

[Blencogo]

Hi,

Sorry to hear about your drive - I hope you had managed to back up everything important.

Yes, you should be able to reinstall the original software and operating system onto a blank hard disc from your Recovery Discs. You will have some work to do as you will have to apply all Microsoft and Vaio Updates, Programs and Data to bring the original system up to date.

If you send me your email address by PM I will send you the Manual for the TX-Series which will help you replace the drive. It is a .PDF file of 3MB and is too big to attach here.

[JMac1727]

Thanks for the question about backups!

The answer is yes I have a good back up - in fact I have an Acronis True Image, disk image. However, I only imaged the C-Drive and not the restore partition...

So still left with the choice to save £100 and do it myself or save myself 100 hours and pay Sony to rebuild the laptop for me...