Clone a HDD with some defects (is it reasonable?)
Hello one more time,
I have the following system: Notebook with 1 GB RAM, 2,3 GHz CPU, 120 GB Hitachi HDD hts5425 (SATA), Windows XP SP3.
My HDD has many bad sectors (Reallocation Event Count, Current Pending Sector Count in SMART). May be I clone it to new HDD, that I'm going to buy.
1) If I understand everything correct, the bad sectors don't matter until I have enough "spare space" on the HDD to replace them. From that point of view I think, that it's acceptable to clone my old defective HDD to a new and stable one. The system must be copied without any errors under my previous assumptions, since I have a lot of free space at the moment to replace the possible bad sectors on the faulty HDD. Is the logic right? Or may the system on the old HDD be initially corrupted even in spite of large free space (either on the system partition or on the whole drive)? If it's so, should I better take time and install everything on the new HDD, whithout trying to clone the corrupted one?
Your program Acronis drive monitor has the following results for my Hitachi drive:
1) Reallocation Event Count: 330 - raw value, 100 - value, 0 - offset, the status is "degradation"
2) Current Pending Sector Count: 29 - raw value, 100 - value, 0 - offset, the status is "degradation"
And one more issue about bad sectors to satisfy my curiosity (and spare my time): is it possible to cure these bad sectors, for example, by using a low lewel formatting or some HDD diagnostics tools (Victiria, MHDD ...).
Yes, that sounds great. I will not purchase an SSD, because the laptop is alredy pretty old (i mean the technology) and a fast storage is nothing, if the processor is slow.
What do you mean by the "SW included with the SSD"? Even if I buy an SSD, where is guarantee, that it also provides a software for system transfer? If so, it should likely be another Acronis solution, licensed by the hardware vendor. Newertheless, it's very interesting to know about the possibilities of TI.
So. Please answer reasonably, wheather it's a good decision to clone the system (OS and programs) from the corrupted HDD (it works, but it SEEMS to be sometimes unrealible, see above about the reasons ... An it isn't degrading anymore with time). I've corrected the question to contain only one problem.
Sorry, I don’t work for Acronis – this is a user-to-user forum. Acronis staff do post and their avatars are clearly marked.
As for adding an SSD to an ‘old’ laptop – it is a very viable option. Assuming you run Windows, much of the overhead is RAM and disk – these are far more important than processor – MS has stated as such for a decade...
As for bad sectors on HDD and rescuing a compromised volume -- there are no guarantees in this world, but cloning on a non-sector-basis is the best bet to rescue a compromised OS. But if it fails, who cares? It’s an OS volume on a flakey HDD – if money is an issue, just get a new HDD for $30 and build from scratch in under an hour.
Many of the new SSDs include cloning software – but you have to research, but at last look: intel, crucial and Kingston include.
Acornis has no monopoly --not even close to one. There are lots of other choices out there from diff software makers. Just look around with Bing or Google and you can find lots of disk imaging/backup products. It's still a competitive market.
. . .
What do you mean by the "SW included with the SSD"? Even if I buy an SSD, where is guarantee, that it also provides a software for system transfer? If so, it should likely be another Acronis solution, licensed by the hardware vendor, since Acronis is some kind of monopoly in backup software since 2005 or something like this.
. . .
Acornis has no monopoly
[/quote]
Sorry, I've already realised it. Newertheless it was ranked as the best solution in the last years ... If it's not a monopoly, they should be aware even more =)
If you are going to clone or backup a hdisk that you belive is wonky, run chkdsk /f on the hdrive before doing the clone or backup operation--otherwise the recreation of the image will inherit the wonks (not to be confused with the play/movie about the Scopes trial).
Ivan, in *theory*, so long as you don't choose "sector-by-sector" imaging, you should be able to make an image backup of your HDD and restore it to another, fresh/new HDD without worries. In *practice*, I would absolutely do a full checkdisk on your wonky HDD before proceding.
As for doing a new low-level format to try and see if you can find/fix some of the bad blocks; this may also be something to try rather than just throw the drive away, but if it were me I would relegate the drive to some purpose that is non-critical (though I can't think of what kinds of data/programs those might be!).
It's possible that some random event created some bad sectors-- a hard bump or such, but generally, once disk starts throwing up bad sectors, it will continue to do so with increasing frequency, creating a bit of a muck of your software.
I'd recommend replacing the drive.
==> throwing up bad sectors, it will continue to do so with increasing frequency
absolutly true --
Way beyond the scope of a user forum: internal map areas are consumed prior to exposing remapped sectors at the file system layer -- at this point, the drive is going down. in the old days, bad sectors were not as well hidden to the file system, so low-level format was a viable option --- no longer. Most mfgs will absolutly not provide the utility unless you have an enterprise agreement. you can get a 3rd party low-level utility, but it is a patch on a leaking bucket...
once disk starts throwing up bad sectors, it will continue to do so with increasing frequency
Yes, everything correct, some new suspicious sectors have appeared =( The new drive is already ordered... I hope, that the restoration will go sucsessfully (via TIH 2009, aka TI WD Edition).
Still waiting for stable TI 2012
The original question here was never answered directly although there are some hints at a response in the flow above. I have the same question, so let me rephrase it and see if it makes sense.
I have a hard disk that is throwing up bad sectors. I repaired it with chkdsk and it worked great until a few days ago. My regular Acronis backup (ATI 2011) alerted me to the problem appearing again because the backup failed due to unreadable sectors.
I used CHKDSK to repair the disk again and am taking a final backup of the disk.
I have another HD and want to move my OS etc. to that disk.
What is the best way?
1. Use the backup I have made and restore to the new disk?
or
2. Clone the failing disk to the new disk?
I have read that creating an image of a disk where there have been "repairs" by CHKDISK will close off sectors on the new disk as if they were bad. this would seem to indicate that restore might be the better choice. If anyone knows the answer to this question, I would appreciate an answer.
Thank you for taking the time to help.
The best way is to restore your backup from the recovery CD.
IMO, cloning and backing up sector by sector should be reserved to cases where the disk is not usable through a regular backup approach. The idea is then to capture as much information as possible on an new disk and fix/access most of that information afterwards before a complete mechanical/electronic failure. In short, for me, cloning and sector by sector backup is more about forensics than disk protection/upgrade.
for me, cloning and sector by sector backup is more about forensics than disk protection/upgrade.
That's a good way to look at it. I have used various tools to extract as much data as possible from a failing disk on clients' computers, but that's because they were imprudent enough not to have a backup. I'd far rather just restore from the most recent disk image.
Hmm,
It looks like my thank you post did not go through.
Anyway, thank you for the advice; I have restored my backup to a new hard disk (that I bought with the first round of trouble), keeping the partition size the same as the original (and setting up the rest of this larger disk as another partition). All seems to have gone well and there is a great increase in performance (probably indicating that the failing disk was in worse shape than I thought -- a warranty replacement is on the way.)
One other question.
Since I have restored the drive exactly as is, can I just continue to use the scheduled OS backup that I had been using (the one from which the content on the new disk was created)? Or should I create a new scheduled backup?
Thanks again.
You can use the same task. You may notice that the backup that you restored is not in the list of available versions in ATI (not sure if this problem was fixed). Doesn't matter, the TIB file is still there. ATI will continue the backup task.
Thank you. I will do so.
By the way, I have to say that this incident restored my confidence in ATI. Though I do not like the new interface, it appears that the basic functions are sound and my backups functioning properly. I was a bit worried after some of the comments.
IF sectors are marked bad on a disk, they won't be picked up when you make a backup. ONce you have a viable backup, I'd get rid of the original disk. ONce a disk starts throwing up bad sectors, it usually keeps doing so with increasing frequency until you end up with an absolute mess.
Thanks for the clear statement. That is what I surmised about backup, but it is great to have it confirmed. The fact that backup is not possible (depending on the settings) when there are bad sectors (ones that cannot be read) is actually a good thing. It can be one of the first signs of impending disk failure and can save a lot of trouble as it did for me. OS and HDs try to gloss over the errors with self-repair these days, so Acronis can perform a good service here.
I totally agree about getting rid of a disk with bad sectors; it will go back to WD on RMA after I shred all the data on it. Not worth the risk to try and use it any more.