I have a desktop with a failing hard drive. The OS still boots and the system seems fine except the diagnostics say the hard drive is failing. I want to get ahead of the problem and image the hard drive before it gets any worse. I am setting it up to image now, so I'm not even sure if that will work. My question is about restoring the image. What kind of complications could this bring up after restoring the image to a new drive? Is there any possibility of damaging the new drive?
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Image a failing hard drive 5
- Thread starter dan08
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goombawaho
MIS
No possibility of damaging the new drive from a physical perspective. Will you get a working/bootable system is another question. Just depends on whether everything gets transferred over before the hard drive gets worse. Better do it in a hurry. You can clone directly from old to new versus having to make an image and restore it later. If one method doesn't work, try the other and possibly with different software too.
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goombawaho
MIS
You're lucky, many people don't get any chances. It's just boom/dead and only data recovery can help you.
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No physical damage will occur, and if the imaging software can skip damaged sectors (if any exist at this point) you should be fine. Though some will bark at damaged sectors and stop the cloning process. Other's will attempt to recover the sector. I have one that tries to read the sector a couple times, and if it can;t it will skip it. This ensures that as much data is restored allowing proper functioning of the new image.
Basically if the image is successful, the new drive will boot as the old one did.
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Phil AKA Vacunita
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Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
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Basically if the image is successful, the new drive will boot as the old one did.
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Phil AKA Vacunita
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Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.
Web & Tech
- Thread starter
- #6
Imaging the damaged drive was unsuccessful. I use Clonezilla, and I guess it doesn't skip damaged sectors. Oh well, I was able to use Windows backup tool just fine. Imaging just would have been easier to restore. What imaging software do you use that will skip bad sectors?
Its an old DOS application, named after the first successfully cloned sheep.
Unfortunately, I don't think its made anymore.
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Phil AKA Vacunita
----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.
Web & Tech
Unfortunately, I don't think its made anymore.
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Phil AKA Vacunita
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Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.
Web & Tech
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Clonezilla should be able to skip bad sectors. Run it in expert mode and enable the -rescue switch.
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goombawaho
MIS
The old bootable CD of GHOST I use has a switch for ignoring bad sectors as well, but it's more appropriate for Windows XP and earlier.
These are free tools, but A) don't know if they will work with a different brand drive and B) whether they have any "ignore bad sectors" switch.
These are free tools, but A) don't know if they will work with a different brand drive and B) whether they have any "ignore bad sectors" switch.
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I just finished cloning a 1tb Samsung drive to a 320gb Western Digital drive. The Samsung drive was not even recognized by windows so I figured NO WAY would it work, I used Acronis 2013 & it did the job. Acronis has the option to ignore bad sectors during cloning, I have used it many times & sometimes when there were bad sectors I just did a repair install & all is good, good software.
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- #11
goombawaho
MIS
As long as you have your data backed up, you can play around all you want. Though the time factor starts to go in favor of a full O.S. reload and then putting your data back, unless you're having fun with it.
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And playing around is something you cold do with 'Spinrite'.
As the drive is failing, get your data off first, as Spinrite will give the drive a good caning. For best explanation of what it does (and it's not free - sorry) go to their site.
But in short, the software will make a determined effort to read dodgy sectors, and relocate that data to a known good empty sector then mark the bad one as such.
Once this has been done, you could then try to get another image created as then, the imaging software will only have to deal with good sectors.
I've used the software many times with good results, but that was on old '98 installs and relatively small (<60Gb) drives.
Good luck with whatever you do.
Regards, Andy.
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As the drive is failing, get your data off first, as Spinrite will give the drive a good caning. For best explanation of what it does (and it's not free - sorry) go to their site.
But in short, the software will make a determined effort to read dodgy sectors, and relocate that data to a known good empty sector then mark the bad one as such.
Once this has been done, you could then try to get another image created as then, the imaging software will only have to deal with good sectors.
I've used the software many times with good results, but that was on old '98 installs and relatively small (<60Gb) drives.
Good luck with whatever you do.
Regards, Andy.
My pathetic attempts at learning HTML can be laughed at here:
My home page
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