Laptop & Restoring an OS on a New HD

[Moontrash]

my hard drive hasnt gone bad or anything but i wondered, since most lapotops dont come with a restore disc, or the OS(mine didnt)...can someone tell me the process in which i could back up the drive as it is and put it on a new hd? My question mainly refers to if it were to go bad and i decide to install a bigger or smaller HD and maybe even from a different brand, how will i put the ghosted or backed up image of it on a totally different hd. In the past, you couldnt put a ghosted or backed up image of a hd on a 250 gb western digital drive when it came from a 300 seagate or whatever. Is there any way to just take the image (acronis, ghost or whatever software deos well) that was created and drop it on a newer bigger hd?

if a hd died, and unless you buy the restore disc from the laptop manufacturer, you would be sorta...screwed i think. I'm sure there's a way to do it and more than a few users in here know the process so i thought i'd ask

[edDV]

Depends on the make/model of laptop. Many (e.g. Compaq/HP) have special restore partitions on the drive that must be replicated. Others have a single partition that can be imaged (e.g Ghost). Your laptop support site should have details on HD swapping.

If you don't want to deal with the details, have a computer shop install the new drive.

[TBoneit]

And to add some come with software to create restore DVDs. I've seen that on several brands such as Acer and some Toshibas for example

[Moontrash]

i noticed at the toshiba site that it has a feature to create restore discs etc...but if i were to add a different size/brand hd, would it still take the restore discs?

i mean i could easily just get another os an be done with it but i figure there's gotta be a way to transplant the os from one hd to a different one. If there's not there should be.