I have the same question.

If you use a harddrive different from the one that came with your Laptop then will get a 1005 error should you ever trey to use the system restore disks.

One day Microsoft developed an irrational fear that someone might take an OEM copy of windows and put it on a different piece of hardware. So in hp's recovery application there is a small piece of code that checks the motherboard for the number and checks the hard drive for the same number. If they don't match the recovery is canceled. That number on the hard drive is refereed to as a tattoo. The ironic part of all this is that if you use a normal Vista install CD and use the serial number found on the bottom of your laptop it installs just fine whether you are installing to a new machine or not. If you are thinking about upgrading you are probably pretty tech savy and will simply clone the entire partion over. Just be aware that the recovery partion is now about as useful to you as a chair made of water.

Through humor, you can soften some of the worst blows that life delivers. And once you find laughter, no matter how painful your situation might be, you can survive it.

My roommate swapped his with the drive in his WD Passport. Zero problems. Haven't messed with mine yet.

i have at Corsair X32 SSD ...no problem ....a lot faster than the prehistoric stock drive

Diane said:

psijac said: If you use a harddrive different from the one that came with your Laptop then will get a 1005 error should you ever trey to use the system restore disks. One day Microsoft developed an irrational fear that someone might take an OEM copy of windows and put it on a different piece of hardware. So in hp's recovery application there is a small piece of code that checks the motherboard for the number and checks the hard drive for the same number. If they don't match the recovery is canceled. That number on the hard drive is refereed to as a tattoo.

I hate to say it, but that's completely off base, the HP OEM BIOS lock is tied only to the system BIOS strings, it has nothing at all tied to the hard drive, nor does it care.  I have a house full of HP systems, all with replacement larger hard drives, and all were imaged with the HP recovery media just fine.  Diane

I agree with Diane.  I changed the HDD in both my touchsmart adn in my TX2500 tablet adn the recovery disks worked in both.  The only problem I had was with the recovery disks that I nade with my touchsmart but that ended up being  afirmware issue with the optiarc blureray drive.  The OEM recovery disks that HP sent me ended up working fine.

Most, if not all recovery disk sets look for  atag in the bios which tells them either to work or not.  For instance, most Dell recovery disks are plain old Windows installation disks that will runa s a recovery disk on anything Dell and not ask for the activation key.  Run them on something else and they will work but yoiu will be asked to input the key and you will also have three days to activate the software.

 So, changing your hard drive should have no effect on the recovery disks.

David

http://i99.photobucket.com/albums/l299/xz550rj/HPMagicGiveaway.jpg

Woohoo! I won my Touchsmart!