Restore failing after repacing HDD

[j_hill]

I have a PCG-7185M (VGN-NW20EF) which is blue screening and SMART is reporting the HDD as failing.

I have replaced the HDD (was WD 3200BEVS now WD3200BUDT). I am unable to copy the whole drive as it always locks up on the C partition, but the recovery partition transfers fine. However on trying to restore the complete system (via F10 and the recovery tools) it gets to "Setup is applying system settings" and then a pop up box says "Windows Setup could not configure windows to run on this computer's hardware".

Would a slightly different HDD cause this?

Also there is no option to create recovery disks from the recovery center, is it possible to download a set?

Any help would be greatfully received!

[Blencogo]

Hi j_hill and welcome.

Looking at the specifications of the WD3200BUDT It looks like this is an "AV SATA Hard Drive" which has different characteristics from a laptop drive as it is designed for HDR's, DVR's and PVR's and for 24/7 surveillance video recording.  They are designed to record multiple video streams.

I don't know if these drives will work in a laptop but from what you say, it seems unlikely.

It may be worth contacting WD to see if there is a jumper setting you can try for use in a PC.

[j_hill]

Thanks for your reply.

Having done some more digging it appears that this is an advanced format drive which has 4K sectors rather than 512 bytes. You can install win7 sp1 on it O.K.(I tried and it works but I dont have an OEM home pro disk only a professional one :smileyangry:) but the restore partion has the pre sp1 version of windows 7.

A lot of the newer high capacity disks are using advanced format and there are a lot of other people getting the same problem on various machines.

[j_hill]

Just in case someone with the same problem finds this thread I though I would update with my resolution.

After an unfruitful search on the web for an OEM Win7 SP1 home premium install disk I realised I had the recovery DVD for my Mum's Fujitsu laptop (I'm her support desk :smileywink:).

This installed onto the Sony no problem and then I got the necessary drivers/utilities from the Sony support site. It was mainly the Ricoh driver for the memory card reader and the hot key driver that were required. Apart from the windows now being branded Fujitsu everything works fine.

[celavey]

Right. I have found this thread via Bing and I would say that it leads to the right direction. Another case that has been resolved. Thanks for sharing.