no vista recovery disc - new hard drive

[frank1234]

I have a acer aspire 9301 awsmi, and have just had to replace the hard
drive.

I have no restore / recovery discs.
Do i have to purchase a new edition of window vista and new licence?
Or can i use a different recovery disc? A friend has a Samsung r60, will
these discs work or just give problems?

[smlunatick]

Recovery disks / systems are system specific. You need to use the
original Acer versions. Contact Acer to see if they will have a
recovery package that your can purchase.

BTW: Acer might be a company that delivered the Recovery system as a
hidden partition on the original hard drive.

[peter]

Having an Acer Laptop I know that the original recovery method was from a
Hidden Partition on the HD..........I also know that once loaded the machine
nagged you to create a Recovery Disk which you ignored or you would not be
here.
Now your only option is to contact Acer and ask to purchase a Recovery
CD...small fee.
Not only is the OS on that Recovery CD but also all of the drivers for the
Hardware..
OR to go spend $$$ on a full retail version of Vista and then visit the Acer
site to download
all of the hardware drivers for your particular machine.

[nightmare6667]

I Had an acer for a customer where the hdd was on its way out and i couldnt load windows properly and they hadnt made a recovery disk, but I was Lucky and managed to clone the restore partition the way I did it was,

For this u will need
1X working PC
1X usb to sata or ide converter
1X new Hard drive

1 Take the hard drive from the faulty laptop
2 plug the hard drive into the usb converter and clone the hidden Partition using Macrium Reflect(free) on the working pc, dis-connect the faulty drive

3 Get the new drive and plug in to the usb converter, partition it the same as the origional so ie 1X10GB partition for Restore and 1X32GB partition called ACER and the rest called DATA, the drives dont need to be the same size but u do need enough space to be able to take the 10gb partition for the Restore area and i created a 10GB Partition called PQSERVICE, 32GB partition called ACER then i had 15gb left and called it DATA as that was how the origional drive was set out the origional DATA partition was also 32GB and NOT 15GB

4 copy the Acer restore partition to the new drive and replace the new drive in laptop
5 swich on pc and press alt+F10 follow the instructions and windows will install
6 save £50.00 for not ordering a new install DVD from acer who should have shiped it with the pc in the first place!!!!!

or you could try building a recovery dvd on a working acer laptop I didnt have one around so I couldnt do it

[Stan Starinski]

Acer hehehe.
One of the worst.

One don't you get an HP or Asus?
HP is recommended.