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Using ADD on failing disk - help!

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Hi Acronis Forum -

My first post, hope you can help. I have a failing (250Gb, 3 pttns) disk in a Dell 4400 PC running Windows XP. XP BSODs on bootup with an "unmountable boot partition" error. Running chkdsk from Recovery Console gives "too many unrecoverable errors".
I tried to see the pttns with a previous version of ADD but it complained with a "dynamic disks found" error.
I have upgraded to ADD12, on a bootable CD media, and am glad to say that it recognises the partitions and can browse to folders/ files via the file manager window.
My question is this-
As the files and folders can be browsed, is there any way they can be easily copied off to eg a USB drive before the disk fails completely?
FWIW, I also have ATI to hand if this would help.
I fear the disc may brick imminently, so any helpful speedy responses would be much appreciated.
Many thanks.
S

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Seth:

There are some tools in ADD 12, like Clone, Copy Volume, and Move Volume, that might work, but the better tool to use would be TrueImage. I would recommend first creating an image of your disk and storing the image on an external USB disk. Do this ASAP in case the failing disk degrades further. You may get errors in TI if it cannot read some of the bad sectors, so you may have to do a sector-by-sector image.

You can attempt to restore this image to a new disk but it will likely not recover everything since the source disk has unrecoverable errors. But at least you will be able to browse the image and recover some of the files.

If you have a machine with Windows 7 or 8, attach the failing disk to it (after you have saved an image of it) and let chkdsk grind away at it. I did this recently with a disk that Windows Server 2003 (XP-based) couldn't recover, on the off chance that the chkdsk routine had been improved in Windows 7. It took overnight, but in the end it did recover all of the bad sectors.

If all else fails you may end up needing to reinstall the OS to a new disk, but you should be able to recover some of your user files from the image.

Hi Mark,
Thanks for your detailed and helpful advice. I have run a disc of ATI 2015 on the machine and tried to initiate a sector by sector disc partition image. The problem is that, presumably in trying to read/mount my dying C: partition, the software is throwing up mutiple sector read errors and, despite my ticking "ignore all" or "cancel" to these dialogues, the screen becomes unusable. When I go to specify the external USB drive as the image target disc, the "browse" button becomes unresponsive and no target can be selected. The PC front switch is the only way out of this - not ideal. I retried this operation tho without sector by sector being ticked to see if that helped by still the software freezes on trying to initially load / read the internal disc. I have never even got as far as starting the image creation process.
What to do please? I am desparate to recover some of this data drive!

Many thanks for your responses, S

(PS I am aware that this post by now may be more suited to the ATI forum, tho am keen not to upset forum etiquette and double post. Maybe admins to bring it to other users attention? Thnx)

Seth:

If your disk is almost unreadable then you should consider using SpinRite https://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm to try to recover it. This program is the recovery method of last resort if a disk is almost unreadable.