Recovery From A Dead Drive!

Hi.
My Pavilion dv7-6b51ea (QG732EA), Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit), BIOS F.1C started giving me a SMART disk warning this was followed shortly after by a decrease in performance (20-30 min to boot to desktop) and this was shortly followed by a blue screen with failure notifications, in short a dead hard drive.
I took heed of the warnings and manually removed the little data I keep on the C: drive, although I didn't get as far as backing it up as the warnings suggested due to the zx spectrum like performance.
I also acquired a Intel 520 series, 480 GB SSD to replace it's Toshiba HDD with.
My conundrum now is how best to proceed with installing the SSD.
I have somewhere, in a safe place, the recovery discs created on the initial install although at the time of writing I can't remember where the safe place is!.
Option 2 I believe would be to use Intel's data migration software, providing I can get the 1TB Toshiba HDD to come back to life?.
Although would these 2 options not leave me with a OS set up for a HDD on a SSD?.
My other option I believe would be to do a "clean install" from a windows 7 SP1 ISO.
This is the option I leaning towards.
If I understand correctly from the research I was able to do prior to my HDD's demise if I take this route windows will install itself making the necessary settings for use with a SSD, although I can't see a setting in the BIOS to enable AHCI, I believe AHCI is enabled by default in an HP bios?.
Also If I understand correctly I can during the beginning of the install create a D: RECOVERY partition giving me a C: for the OS, the aforementioned D: for recovery and the System Reserved Partition as my dv7 was set up prior to this, it also had HP_TOOLs partition which would be created with the install of HP UEFI Support Environment I believe.
Would this then allow me to use HP Recovery Management as before (ie. via hotkeys etc.)?, if not I think I also have a copy of the SWSetup folder somewhere could I extract the necessary files from there?.
I would like my recovery to contain a copy of windows + updates to this date if this is possiable leaving me to install the HP components I require after, in the case of a windows failiure (I would prefer this option as after 3 years of use I still could not rid the system of some OEM components, Magic Desktop in particular, and a trial version of Norton Internet Security which recently reapeared in place of the Norton subscription after letting Intel's driver update utility update the chipset and network drivers).
Any advice is greatly apreciated.
Many thanks.
Grant.

Thanks for the swift response Huffer.
Sorry mine's delayed, I'm sharing computer time with my nephews on my sisters laptop at the moment.
Also please excuse my ignorance as I've not delt with any hardware issues for over 10 years so this has been a steep relearning curve and I'm new to SSD's and have no experiance of RAID, I think and I've done to much reading in to short a amount of time and confussed myself a bit.
Since my initial post I've cautiously coaxed my dv7 back to life and found the recovery discs although both are probably redundant now as I've also aquired a Windows 7 .iso.
I've been back in the BIOS and can not find any drive mode settings, device manager has the Intel Mobile Express Chipset SATA AHCI Controller controlling my HDD & BD ROM and Intel Rapid Storage Technology is installed although I'm unsure if either of these are an indication of whether I'm configured for AHCI or RAID?.
Is there a easy way of telling which it is? as the Intel RAID driver you directed me to says "The driver should be installed after the operating system has been installed. F6 and RAID BIOS configurations need to be performed prior to installation of this driver for proper operation".
Will windows not install basic drivers to get me up and running?
You asked "Do you have an mSSD accelerator cache drive?", I'm presuming you mean on the Toshiba drive, I can find no mention of this in the dv7 specs or on the Toshiba MK1059GSM specs.
I'm half tempted to try a "suck it and see" approach but would prefer to get things right during install if I can!.
To this end would I be better off creating a D: RECOVERY partition during Install or wiil HP software do this for me when added later, I remember reading somewhere systems can sometimes be a bit particular with regards to a recovery partition?.
Once again many thanks.
Grant.

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Hi @Jef35,
Welcome to the HP Forums!
It is a superb place to find answers and information!
For you to have the best experience in the HP forum I would like to direct your attention to the HP Forums Guide Learn How to Post and More
I understand that while doing the recovery back to factory you opted to backup your personal files and would now like to know how to restore them .
Here is a link to HP PCs - Restoring Files that were Backed Up Using HP Recovery Manager (Windows 7)
If you appreciate my responding, please click the kudos button below to say thanks.
If this resolved your difficulty please select solution provided to enable other posters to locate this information more easily.
I hope this helps
Sparkles1
I work on behalf of HP
Please click “Accept as Solution ” if you feel my post solved your issue, it will help others find the solution.
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How do I restore backup1.swm files created during system recovery from external hard drive.

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WaliN wrote:
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Message was edited by: luquaas

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