New Hard Drive in Dell Win 7

[CFC]

I just fitted a new hard drive in a dell machine. It had Windows 7 installed on it before. I was expecting to have to use the CD'S to install Win 7 on the new hard drive but it was installed on it automatically after I followed the prompts. Can someone explain how this is possible

[KittenKong]

It isnt possible, unless your hard drive was not new. Or did you perhaps have some bootable disk or USB key in place?

 

What exactly did the prompts say?

[Chicog]

Are you sure it doesn't have a hard drive and an SSD containing the OS?

[CFC]

2 hours ago, KittenKong said:

It isnt possible, unless your hard drive was not new. Or did you perhaps have some bootable disk or USB key in place?

 

What exactly did the prompts say?

 

I cant  remember exactly what the prompts were as I did it 2 weeks ago but it definitely loaded Win 7 on the new hard drive without any CD'S or data stcks  being inserted into the machine

[CFC]

2 hours ago, Chicog said:

Are you sure it doesn't have a hard drive and an SSD containing the OS?

 

I will look into this later on today

[brianinbangkok]

What model is the Dell ?
Looks like it has a small SSD for the OS in it.

[CFC]

20 hours ago, Chicog said:

Are you sure it doesn't have a hard drive and an SSD containing the OS?

 

I have looked for the SSD but cant find it, if its got one how would I find it?

[CFC]

17 hours ago, brianinbangkok said:

What model is the Dell ?
Looks like it has a small SSD for the OS in it.

Dell Precision T3500

[brianinbangkok]

Dell Precision T3500

Thats a desktop tower.
Should be easy enough to spot a small ssd drive.
Make few photo's of the inside and lets see if we can spot it :)

[KittenKong]

Apparently some models of that series have sockets for M.2 drives. These are attached directly to the motherboard and dont look like normal SATA SSDs. If you have an M.2 drive attached this amounts to having a bootable disk or key, and it could contain your operating system.

 

If your machine is like that then adding a new hard drive would not normally involve reinstalling Windows at all, but there might be prompts relating to the creation of a new user if the default user location was on the second (new) drive.

 

It's also possible that if this machine has an M.2 drive it could contain a restore partition which was launched when the new drive was fitted and which then automatically restored Win 7 to that second drive. That would be an unusual way to use an M.2 drive though.

 

[MeHere]

probably some kind of recovery hard drive image in a hidden system partition

[brianinbangkok]

probably some kind of recovery hard drive image in a hidden system partition

OP replaced the hard drive with a new empty drive.

Previous post about a tiny M2 drive seems likely and indeed that could hold the hidden system recovery partition that you mention.

So again look inside and see if you can find the small ssd or indeed the M2 drive.

A M2 drive with the OS on it would explain what OP said and would make system faster then OS in the conventional drive.

[gk10002000]

defaulted to the internet and loaded the OS from there?

[brianinbangkok]

defaulted to the internet and loaded the OS from there?

Doubt it , but that would be cool :)

It's possible on business networks however if server is setup for this.

[lostinisaan]

Are you sure that the hard drive was empty when you did the change?