Loading Windows 7

[Az-1]

Is there a way of installing the operating system onto my laptop without overwriting HDD data that has just been recovered?

[ChuckFickens]

I would...

1) Shrink the existing partition on the drive during partitioning part of the install to as small as you can.
2) create new partition on the unallocated space freed up on the drive.
3) install windows on the newly created partition.
4) once installed copy all data you want from the original partition over to the new partition.
5) delete original partition
6) expand new partition to the full size of the drive.

Note: if you're not 100% sure what you are doing there is a fair risk of you accidentally deleting all your "recovered data" and step 6 may need third party partitioning software.

With the above note in mind... a safer bet would be to connect the drive with the recovered data on it to another computer as an external drive (USB drive caddies are only about £15), copy the data off the drive and then you can wipe the drive altogether and do a clean install onto all the drive.

[VHG]

Buy an external hard drive and copy ALL the recoverd data from the laptop to the External Hard Drive.

When you have verified all the data is on the external hard drive then do a clean install of W7 (or factory reset) on the laptop

[bazwillrun]

Depends where the HDD data is.

If its stored in the current Windows "user" folder like My Docs then when you do a new install Windows creates a file called windows old and everything in the current windows folder is saved there.

You could create a new partition and then use the Windows Easy Transfer tool
this will allow you to specify what to back up and where.

Or as has been mentioned you could back up to an external device, depending on size of backup, Flash drives, HD or DVD etc, I've even done backups to 32GB cards on my HTC phone for people when really stuck and nothing else to hand.

[VHG]

>>>If its stored in the current Windows "user" folder like My Docs then when you do a new install Windows creates a file called windows old

Not always, it depends what type of Windows install you do.

If you do a "clean install" then nothing on the disk is saved.

[bazwillrun]

I have done clean installs over a ton of times and I always get the windows old folder and Windows also tells me that it will create this folder.

I never re-install windows any other way than clean install, otherwise as far as I'm concerned its normally defeating the object of the re-install in the first place

[woofgang]

What ever you do, I would certainly do an external data backup first.

[VHG]

>>>I have done clean installs over a ton of times and I always get the windows old folder

You wont get the windows.old folder if you format the drive during install for example (which is why I said it depends what Windows install you do).

[Az-1]

I get the boot menu when I start up, so I can't actually access the files to save them.