Recover Windows from failing drive to new drive from recovery partition

[RGecy]

Try to fix a friends computer, the hard drive is failing on her HP envy m6 and I need to install windows 8.1 OS over to a new drive. The computer will not boot completely and it has bad sectors affecting the c: drive. Windows tries to fix them but it ran for over 24 hours and never finished. I have been able to copy over the recovery partition to a new drive, but an OS transfer using partition software does not work. Is there any way I can recover the OS to the new drive using just the recovery partition?

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

Welcome to Tom's Hardware, @RGecy!

I'd strongly recommend you use the directions in MS official website on how to create a bootable media with the same OS version of your friend's laptop and re-install Windows from scratch. You should definitely avoid using the OS files from the old hard drive that failed due to too many bad sectors. Those sectors contain data, so it's possible that there are files even from the recovery partition that are corrupted.
Since Windows 8.1 was already installed on that Laptop, you should use the same OS version to re-install it. The operating system is tied to the motherboard of the computer, which means you can easily re-activate the OS with the same product key/activation code. (Usually it automatically activates once you go online)

That's the surest way to avoid further booting issues with your friend's laptop.
Keep me posted if you have more questions!

Best of luck!
SuperSoph_WD