Hot swapping repair

[csj2k]

Hi

I have a problem with an on old laptop (Acer Aspire 5100). I need to do a clean install but the cd/dvd drive works on and off so cannot do a clean install that way. The recovery partition was corrupt so I just formatted the hdd. I can take out the laptop hdd and put it into my pc's hot swap bay so surely there should be a way to solve this problem? Ideas, options?

Thank you in advance

 

[csj2k]

I forgot to add that I'm running Win7Pro on my pc. I want XP or Vista on the laptop.

 

[Skippy27]

Put the install files on a flash drive that is bootable, boot with it and then run the installer from there.

 

[csj2k]

Put the install files on a flash drive that is bootable, boot with it and then run the installer from there.

Do I need to do that as an image or can I just copy the files from my XP disk to the flash drive. Also, how do I make it bootable? - do you know if is there some software to help with this?

 

[csj2k]

I wasn't being lazy with all the questions lol, I was just hoping for 'best practice' as there seems to be a lot of options and different programs. I found a video which explained how to mount the image then use cmd to prepare and copy it to a usb flash drive. It's copying over at the moment so I'll let you know what happens.

 

[zdbc13]

1. Download an iso file like this (XP Pro, SP2)

http://thepiratebay.se/torrent/3900296

2. Use this Microsoft tool to copy it to the USB drive

http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msstore/html/pbPage.Help_Win7_usbdvd_dwnTool

Good luck