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Cloning bad disk

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A clone is a bit for bit copy disk to disk so your end result will be the same the source used.

Have you tried to repair the disk using Windows chkdsk utility?  You may find the Fix Disk Corruption link in my signature of benefit in doing so.

I have tried all of the chkdsk versions with no luck.

It wont boot into windows due to the disc corruption.

I am hoping that I can fit a new drive do a clean install of windows and transfer my important files.

Do you have a backup of the drive from before it went bad?  That would save you having to do a clean install if it isn't too old.

No. I'm afraid I have been a bit slack, as it is the wife's laptop.

I can plug it into a caddy and read all the files on my desktop.

I am running chkdsk again to see if will work.

I would recommend downloading the diagnostic tools from the drive makers support site as well as using CHKDSK - bad sectors may be in areas of the drive not allocated with a drive letter.

Dedicated diagnostic utilities from the disk manufacturers take the longest time to complete the checks, but provide the most accurate methods of checking whether the disk is good or needs replacement:

 - Western Digital drives: Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for Windows

 - Seagate disks: SeaTools for Windows

 - HGST disks: HGST Windows Drive Fitness Test (WinDFT)

 - Intel SSDs: Intel Solid State Drive Toolbox

 - Samsung drives: Samsung Magician

 - ADATA drives: ADATA SSD ToolBox

 - Kingston SSDs: Kingston SSD Toolbox, Kingston SSD Manager

 - Transcend SSDs: Transcend SSD Scope

 - Silicon Power disks: SP ToolBox

 - Toshiba disks: Toshiba PC Diagnostic Tool Utility

Before doing anything, I'd back the drive up (not clone). Then you have a recover/restore option and hopefully before the health of the disk or data on it gets worse.

If you can read the disk, then I would just copy data from it to a new drive with a fresh OS install. You'll have to install the OS, patch it up, install apps and configure as desired but then you can start backing it up regularly from then on. But once it's up, then just copy the files, data, pics, etc from it over.

 

The drive kept locking up, but I eventually managed to do a backup.

I had to do a clean install of Windows 10 and extract the files from the backup and reinstall the programs.

Gave me a chance to de-clutter the laptop.

Long winded job, but a reasonable outcome.

I have ordered a new external drive to use as a backup.

I would like to backup two laptops to this drive

Do I have to make two separate partitions on this drive for each laptop backup?

fitzmooney.

Nope, no need to partition at all (other than the disk initialization and creation of the main NTFS partition to assign a volume letter too).

Personally, I would recommend creating a single "main" backup folder on the drive (in case you plan to store other things on it, this will make it easy to find).  And within that backup folder, create a new folder for each separate computer - probably by computer name or description.  And for each computer, if you have multiple backups (or plan to have more than one per computer), then create a separate backup folder for each of those jobs.  This will keep things nice and clean, easy to navigate and help avoid any confusion down the road.

Also, make sure each backup job in Acronis has a unique name - don't use the exact same name for the main backup job on both computers - it just helps to make sure that there is no chance of "cross-pollination" of any backups across the machines and keeping everything named uniquely and organized in folders will be worthwhile in the long run.