How to transfer a RECOVERY partition to a new HD of a DELL Inspiron 1420?

Solution 1:

Use Clonezilla, a clone of Norton Ghost which is used in most corporate environments to clone OS installs across the corporate network. Clonezilla can be run from a LiveCD, or any bootable media like a USB drive or USB hard disk.

From Wikipedia:

Clonezilla Live allows a user to clone an individual machine. A particular partition or entire disk can be cloned to another medium. This can be saved as an image file or as a replicated copy of the data. The data can be saved to locally attached storage, an SSH server, Samba Server or a NFS file share and then restored at a later date. Clonezilla can be run from either a bootable USB flash drive or CD/DVD. This requires no modification to the machine as the software runs in its own environment.

There are other alternatives that may fit your need better, including the venerable Unix dd command.

Solution 2:

I use drivesnapshot for imaging drives. There's a free trial available.