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#11
dalchina,
Had an Asus for which I got the recovery disks. It installed everything the laptop had when purchased.(I'm assuming the 'recovery stick' does the same job as your manufacturer's recovery partition)
So, we can presume that will be the case for TLS.
I would recommend the Clean Install also. In fact, couldn't one go that route and find out the status of the HDD?
If it is OK, the only expenditure would be time.