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how do i copy a faulty HDD

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i have a faulty HDD and i decided i will clone the drive. what happens each time i when the program reaches one of the faulty sections am asked if i want to retry,ignore,ignore all. i hit ignore or ignore all and the program does this about 10 times and then locks up.
is there any way i can clone my drive?
i have not tried to do a backup yet to another drive if i do this will i be able to backup to new drive?

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First, does running chkdsk /r on the failing drive help at all?

Second, do you have another drive where you could make a disk image to? You should be able to make a disk image, but see my next comment.

Depending on what is wrong with the faulty drive depends on how successful or not copying it will be.

hi Colin thanks for your reply
i have tried a check disc with auto fix bad sectors ticked
i did this before i tried to clone
i have a new drive that i am trying to clone to
what is your thoughts on backing up and when i get another drive to replace the faulty one will i be able to unbackup and read the info on the new drive
David

You may need to run chkdsk /r multiple times before all the sectors get marked. If the drive is so bad that sectors are failing quickly, this may not ever be able to fix them all. Also, if the errors aren't being caused by actual bad sectors this probably won't help.

If chkdsk isn't reporting bad problems, you might try running TI from the CD instead of Windows (or Windows instead of the CD) and see if it makes a difference using a different OS to access the drive.

You could try making a backup image instead. It may work better than cloning.

I recently had a bad drive to image that took a good day to get a good image. Starting with over 4,000 bad sectors and finally ended up with an image with only 10 bad sectors.

David,

You need to run chkdsk from the command prompt (Windows button + 'r' type in cmd), you might need to reboot for this to run.

I think you should try making a complete disk image, the only problem will be if your old drive is so badly affected True Image won't be able to make the image, you'll only know if you try.

Is the PC you are still using the one with the faulty drive? What I mean is, is the faulty drive still booting and running?

Hi Colin & Mudcrab
i will try your suggestions and let you know the result
in my PC i have two drives one with XP and the other with win7 64bit
the win 7 is the one that is a problem
i am going to back up that drive and then i will play around with check disk etc.
many thanks for all of your ideas
David

I'll type fast before I get carted off to the asylum...

Put the drive in a plastic bag (antistat if possible) and stick it in the freezer for a couple of hours. Take it out and connect it to your machine using a USB/SATA or PATA adapter - or by directly connecting it if your cables will reach. Keep it in the bag to keep condensation off, sandwich it between two freezer gel-packs (or frozen peas) run chkdsk, spinrite, HDD regenerator or your drive rescue tool of choice, and then try to clone it as fast as possible. Rinse and repeat as necessary.

If a drive is gradually getting worse, it is sometimes/usually/occasionally a heat-related issue. Sometimes cooling a drive lets it run long enough to pull an image.

I'm at about 50% with this trick.

Bill

Sometimes letting a drive warm up good helps too.

I've seen plenty of drives that have just failed too. It wouldn't matter if they were hot or cold.