Toshiba Laptop hard disc change

j52c · 02-03-2014, 10:56

Hi all.

I wonder if you give me a little help.

My daughters hard drive has given up in her Toshiba Laptop and so we cannot use the system recovery from the hard drive partition. She also never created the system recovery discs, added to that the labels on the underneath of the laptop are all worn away so we don't know the Windows activation key.

I am going to have to purchase the recovery media from Toshiba, I don't suppose it is that bad at £31.

The laptop has a 500gig drive in it at present so does this mean I have to put another 500gig in it, or could I put a 1terra in it.

Thank you in advance.

qasdfdsaq · 03-03-2014, 02:57

You could put a 1TB in it.

£31 for recovery media is a rip-off, they should be no more than £5-10. You can create one yourself for free, for £31 you could almost buy a new copy of Windows.

j52c · 03-03-2014, 11:34

You are so right, it is a rip-off.

My daughter realises now that she should have made the recovery discs when she first got the laptop, she says she knew she could make them but never did.

I have a copy of her particular version of windows but the Microsoft label on the bottom of the laptop was unreadable due to the number being rubbed off after consistently being used on her lap. Another thing about installing from another disc is that I would have to spend time download and update all the drivers and other stuff and I don't really have time for that.

The label for the laptop model was also the same but I did manage to get the serial number from it.

damien c · 03-03-2014, 12:22

Can you take the hdd out of the laptop and try it in a caddie and use a linux live cd to see if you can get the cd key for windows?

j52c · 03-03-2014, 15:36

I attached the hard drive to my win machine and used Disk management in Admin Tools to look at the drive contents without any look, I was going to do copy all the files from the hidden restore partition on the disc but after it had copied 400 meg it got stuck on a file.

I might might try your method later today, thanks for suggesting it.

damien c · 04-03-2014, 14:36

If you can then try "The Magic Jellybean" thats what I have used in the past.

qasdfdsaq · 06-03-2014, 19:39

Hmm, well if you want the convenience you could pay the extra - that said you'll have to download updates anyway as most recovery disks are way out of date