Can i clone failing hard drive

You're going to have to do some reading to understand how to use them, and using a working drive to get a feel for them is a great idea. As for sending them to a pro, that's going to be up to the powers that be at your job. They will have to determine if the cost is worth it. Of course this is a great opportunity to push the awesomeness that is found in a backup solution.

Then about cloning from larger to smaller? I wouldn't even bother. Every revolution of a damaged drive is a potential for catastrophic failure. And if you have to repeat them because the clone failed, you're increasing the chances exponentially.

I have a system that is dedicated to recovery. It's a linux box. Distro doesn't matter, it's whatever you like. It's got pretty decent specs and lots of storage dedicated to recovered data.

Your rig doesn't have to be a power house. One of the biggest requirements of data recovery is time. You can't rush it, unless you really aren't trying to recover the data. On it I have tools like ddrescue and it's gui , testdisk, photorec, qemu-kvm, gparted, gsmartcontrol, and some other things for specific circumstances that I'm not going to look up right now. I get them from these sources:. Once I have the tools, I use dd to create an image of the drive. Then I use the above tools to attempt to recover from the images.

Unless there is no alternative, always image and work on the images. If you kill an image you still have the original. This post is getting way too long. If you want to go this route and would like some guidance, pm me. I can't guarantee total recovery, but I can help you understand what to do and what to expect.

Remember this is your boss. Do you want him constantly telling you that he is running out of space? Also it's not like the price is going up on these. Your best bet is to not clone at this point. Aim for copying data only to keep it quick and simple. SMART technology is essentially based on statistical probability calculations that your disk can survive to a given value of events, based on the statistics of failures occurred on units identical.

You will find tons of information on how to do: google search or read the instructions attached to the solid state disk. This method of a couple of years ago, but there are automatic procedures if the disc does not die during the transplant :. You could use Gparted and clonezilla to clone the drives. Then using clonezilla you can clone the drive. You can google for how to clone a bigger to drive to smaller ssd using clonezilla and will find quite a few good articles on how it's done.

A few SSDs when purchased come with free cloning software such as acronis, so that might help you out as well. You will not find a better 'FREE' data recovery tool than ddrescue I have rescued probably close to 50 failing drives with this tool. TestDisk is also useful for repairing damaged partitions after recovery. It is very possible that DIY recovery will fail and destroy any chances that a professional lab will be able to recover it.

I've purchased a replacement HDD for my home computer, and before I started with the cloning process I figured I'd run another test on the faulty one for good measure. I'm afraid I have bad news: it's now riddled with bad sectors. Cloning this HDD will be impractical. But, there's a silver lining to it: the data I lost?

Mostly my game files, and those I can download from Steam again, so no big deal. I have my personal files backed up to Dropbox, I'll just download my entire folder.

I still have to try to copy and recover a few large files, though. It'll probably take a full day or two, but I kept data loss to a minimum. I just wish I identified this issue sooner. Why not use Windows Easy Transfer to copy all of his setting. You can export it all to an external disk then import it back. Hi Bruno, I reached out to my tech support contact and he had some possible solutions for you..

The drive hardware is completely different one is an SSD and the other a rotating drive and so the performance once you clone may not be as expected. Also since you're saying that the drive is on the verge of failing, the clone may transfer some of the drive problems to the new unit if some of the performance problems are software related.

Step 3. Step 4. Step 5. Click "OK" to confirm if the program asks to erase data on the destination disk. Step 6. Check and edit the disk layout as Autofit the disk, Copy as the source or Edit disk layout. Autofit the disk is recommended. And then shut down the computer, insert the new hard drive to your computer and replace the failing drive.

You can reboot your PC and use the data on a new disk by now. If the replaced drive is a system disk, you need to set the computer to boot from a new hard drive instead of the old one in BIOS. And then restart your computer for reusing data on new disk again. There are two types of bad sectors on hard drives, and these are logical bad sectors and physical bad sectors. You can clone a hard drive with bad sectors in these two circumstances, but the solutions are unlike.

This article provides you two ways to clone and back up a failed hard drive. If you can enter your computer normally and access the hard drive properly, you can back up the failed hard drive in the Windows environment directly. If not, you need to back up the failed hard drive in WinPE with a bootable disk.

I have never tried with Windows 8 or newer, but have had no problems up to and including Windows 7. Haven't had the need to clone a Windows 8 system, but I would assume nothing has changed in that department. Since your disk is failing, I doubt you will have good success making a proper clone.

Very likely the drive could end up timing out on bad sectors while trying to retrieve data. I would back up your personal data and plan a proper reinstallation of Windows to a replacement drive. Cloning the drive should involve a copy of the partitions, not a copy of the drive's remapped, failing sectors, so the new clone should be free of the physical defects found on the first. Data errors are something else, however.

Data that is damaged on the source will still be damaged, if it can even be successfully read. Mar 16, , 9, , 22, USAFRet :. It depends on how and why that drive is failing. Corrupt sectors might just end up as corrupt sectors on the new drive. So my best bet would be to reinstall everything on a clean drive? I guess buying a new copy of windows is in order. The event log says its a hardware failure of the drive but I'd rather not risk messing up a new drive. Will I have to buy office again?

You aren't installing the software to a new computer so your licenses are still valid. You will however need your license keys.

Windows licenses up to and including 7 are usually tied to the motherboard, not the hard drive. Windows 8 is a bit different in that you can transfer it to another computer, provided you remove it from the computer it was previously on first. Feb 22, 2, 1 22, You don't need to buy office nor windows when reinstalling them, you might have to contact MS support tough to activate again.

I ran chkdsk and it said everything is fine but in the event log it showed lots of lines stating that the usa check value at the block was incorrect and the expected value was something else. I take it windows is wrong here but would the data be corrupted? Windows may have logged errors as they happened, while at the same time causing the drive to become aware of them and remap the sectors internally. If the hard drive has successfully remapped any failing sectors, what would there be for chkdsk to find as being wrong except for any file system issues?

It isn't checking that the data is correct, just that it's readable, and the file, folder, and other structures are correct. I wouldn't assume that any of the devices in question are necessarily "wrong" in this case. Thank you so much for your help! I have decided to try to clone the drive first and if everything worked, great, if not I will just do a clean install of windows and all the programs.

Sep 22, 7, 30, If you are trying to clone a drive that has bad sectors, then I would recommend ddrescue freeware. Storage 1 Oct 21, F Question Is this hard drive about to fail? Question Is this hard drive about to fail? Question Failed platter drive analysis Question Have to send drive back to Seagate as failed. Question Is my hard drive failing and causing BlueScreens?