Can I use the HP Recovery partition after formatting and repartitioning the rest of the hard drive?

I recently had my HP Pavilion dv4 2145dx laptop (Windows 7 64-bit) go kerput. The Geek Squad said that the motherboard died. I've purchased another laptop, and I'm using that one for now, and I am using the hard drive from the old dv4 as an external.
I'm planning to keep using the hard drive from the old dv4 as an external for now, but I'd like to be able to fix the dv4 at some point in the future. Here's the problem: to get the most out of the old dv4's drive as an external, I'd like to repartition it so that there is one NTFS partition and one HFS+ partition. That way I could use it easily with both my Mac and Windows machines.
But if I do that, I'm not sure if the HP Recovery image would still work. If it didn't work, then if/when I get the old dv4 a new motherboard, I couldn't restore the OS from the Recovery partition. This is a problem, because I didn't create Recovery Disks (stupid, I know - I'm definitely making them for the new machine).
So I'd like to do one of these two things:
1) Create my dv4 Recovery Disks. Can I do this if the dv4's drive is mounted in an external enclosure?
2) Format and partition the dv4 drive (leaving the Recovery partition intact), and later recover the system from the Recovery partition. Would the Recovery partition still work under those conditions?
Thanks for any help anyone's got.
This question was solved.
View Solution.

Hi:
Anything you do to the C:\drive will render the recovery partition inoperable.
You won't be able to create a set of recovery disks unless the drive is operable in the notebook.
Can you still read all 25 characters of your W7 product key on the bottom of your busted notebook?
If so, you can do this...
If you can read the 25 character Microsoft windows 7 product key, you can download plain Windows 7 ISO files to burn to a DVD for the version of windows that came installed on your PC, and that is listed on the Microsoft COA sticker on your PC's case.
Burn the ISO using the Burn ISO option on your DVD burning program and burn at the slowest possible speed your program will allow. This will create a bootable DVD.
Or use the Windows 7 USB/DVD installation tool to compile the ISO file you download from Digital River. Link and instructions below. You need a 4 GB flash drive to use the USB method of compilation.
http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msstore/html/pbPage.Help_Win7_usbdvd_dwnTool
Use the 25 character product key on the PC to activate the installation.
The key will activate either a 32 or 64 bit installation.
Then go to the PC's support and driver page to install the drivers you need.
Link to the W7 ISO file downloads is below.
http://www.mydigitallife.info/official-windows-7-sp1-iso-from-digital-river/
Or, you can probably still order a set of recovery disks for your notebook from HP.
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=bph07143&tmp_task=solveCategory&cc=us&dlc=en&lan...
Paul

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I've bought a new 1TB Western Digital 'My Passport' hard drive. I've plugged it in and it is busy creating a time machine back up right now. It is going to use about 60GB once done.
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dughall wrote:
Will I be able to use the remaining 940GB when it's finished backing up?
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