Restoring system image on Passport to new SSD because old drive failed

WD External and Portable SSD Portable SSD
1

I have HP Pavillion DV7T laptop with 1T failed mechanical hard drive. System is stuck on Windows starting up. F2 shows drive failure. Drive only has about 140GB on it. Bought new 240GB SSD to use this older laptop as a backup.

I have:

  1. system image from failed drive on 1T My Passport.
  2. repair disc I created “way back when”.
  3. System Recovery DVD for Windows 7-64 SP1 disk 1 of 2 and disk 2 of 2 acquired from HP when I got the laptop.

Given the mechanical drive is failed, can I restore the system image from the Passport to the new SSD? How would the laptop even recognize the Passport and be able to boot from there? Do I need to use #2 or #3 first?

Thanks.

2

Hello,

Not sure if that’s possible since since a system recovery is possible on the original drive were the OS was installed.

You might be able to connect the passport and the new disk to a desktop computer to load the existing image to the new drive. However, I’m not sure if it will load properly on the laptop.

As a recommendation, get a new Windows installation disk and install that on the new drive.

3

If I have saved a system image to my Passport using Windows Backup, am I still able to see the subfolders/files if I want to copy them to a new drive?

4

I think you could use the windows rescue disk to restore from an image file on your WD external.