Copy C: Drive with Bad Sectors
I've been trying for quite some time now to transfer my old C: drive to a new C: drive with no success. It turns out that my old drive has some bad sectors that corrupted some data (files I don't use so I never noticed). I've tried everything recommended here and elsewhere to no avail. I've tried both cloning and backing up from the rescue CD without booting into Windows 7 first. I've run CHKDSK /R multiple times and have confirmed that the results show no errors. I've even run CHKDSK /R and gone straight to the rescue CD so there would be no possibility of Windows doing anything wrong. I've tried making a backup in silent mode with the option to ignore errors.
The results are always the same: "R/W operation on MD device 0x590001 has failed."
I would like to know if there is any other way to move to a new C: drive without having to reinstall Windows.
Thank you.
You could try the following:
run a file backup with ATI, including all the files, on your system partition, and on any user partition. If ATI fails to backup a file, it will tell you what file it is. Take note of the failing files.
If possible, copy each file to another directory. If you can't copy, hopefully you can delete the file.
After you have completed this, run a disk and partition backup on the partitions that you cleaned up. This should work.
After you have backed up completely the visible partitions, try to backup the hidden partitions. If a file is corrupted in a hidden partition and makes the backup fails, let us know. It might be possible to restore the disk without that partition.
Thank you for the feedback/advice. I don't have a backup for this drive; I recently upgraded to a new motherboard and had to reinstall Windows 7. Something happened to my SSD that I was planning on using as the C: drive, so I just grabbed an older hard drive from a previous Windows 7 installation and reinstalled over that. The idea was for this to be temporary and to migrate to a new SSD when it arrived. That's what's been driving me nuts. I have a number of drives in my system (e.g., a separate drive for user files, one huge drive dedicated to photos, and another drive for videos and other projects). All the other drives in my system are fairly new. I have an extra 2TB drive that I'm using to try to copy this defective C: drive; in other words, I've taken the SSD out of the loop right now to make sure that's not the problem. It's fairly obvious that it's the source drive.
All the drives are internal SATA, but I do have an external SATA port and a way to easily connect drives to that, so I use that for convenience; however, I've also tried using the internal connections to make sure there's nothing screwy with the different ports.
Pat L: As far as I can tell, there are no hidden partitions -- how would I know? I'll try backing up the files in the meantime to see if there are any specific files causing this. I've already run CHKDSK a number of times, so I don't know how this would be any different. But I'll give it a try!
Wow. There are many files that can't be copied/backed up. This disk is damaged much more than I had expected. I'm surprised that CHKDSK didn't catch any of these.
There's one file that cannot be deleted at all. I can rename and move it around on the disk, but it cannot be deleted.
There are some system-looking folders that are also damaged and can't be backed up (Windows/sourcing/sessions, windows/system32/recovery, etc.) that I suspect shouldn't be deleted.
I think I may just have to deal with a completely clean reinstall on the new drive. It's a pain, but it's sure-fire. Fortunately, because of how I manage my system, I won't lose any data. I'll just lose time.
As far as I can tell, there are no hidden partitions -- how would I know?
Launch Windows Disk Management, take a screenshot of it showing all drives, and save it for reference.
Wow. There are many files that can't be copied/backed up. This disk is damaged much more than I had expected. I'm surprised that CHKDSK didn't catch any of these.
Did you run un chkdsk /r ? chkdsk /f won't catch sector errors, only file errors.
Also run a drive checking utility from the drive manufacturer, as those sometimes catch errors missed by chkdsk.
As you have some system files affected by the errors, if it were me I would do a clean install of Windows on the new good drive. As you seem to know what you're doing, it doesn't really take that long and then you'd know everything is good.
I did run chkdsk /r ... many times in fact. I looked at the results in Event Viewer, which claimed that the disk was clean.
It's all moot at this point. I've given up and started a clean Windows 7 installation (which is a pain -- the updates alone take a day because Windows doesn't update in one shot ... you have to keep checking for updates even when it tells you that your system is up-to-date ... arrgghh).
I gave up when I ran the Western Digital diagnostic tool (it's an old WD drive). That crapped out saying "Too many bad sectors". I laughed out loud because clearly this disk was not meant to be used. I just wish I had known that before I started all this.
It's too bad there isn't a way for Acronis or some other backup tool to back up a bad disk, bad sectors and all. It wouldn't be any worse than what you start with, and at least you only have corrupted files, not a hard drive that's about die. I'm sure there's some technical reason why this can't be done, or is not easy to do, but it's beyond me.
Anyway, thanks for the help. My suggestion to anyone else struggling with this is: first run the drive vendor's diagnostic tool. If the drive is seriously defective, then save your precious time and start from scratch.
I did run chkdsk /r ... many times in fact. I looked at the results in Event Viewer, which claimed that the disk was clean.
It's all moot at this point. I've given up and started a clean Windows 7 installation (which is a pain -- the updates alone take a day because Windows doesn't update in one shot ... you have to keep checking for updates even when it tells you that your system is up-to-date ... arrgghh).
I gave up when I ran the Western Digital diagnostic tool (it's an old WD drive). That crapped out saying "Too many bad sectors". I laughed out loud because clearly this disk was not meant to be used. I just wish I had known that before I started all this.
It's too bad there isn't a way for Acronis or some other backup tool to back up a bad disk, bad sectors and all. It wouldn't be any worse than what you start with, and at least you only have corrupted files, not a hard drive that's about die. I'm sure there's some technical reason why this can't be done, or is not easy to do, but it's beyond me.
Anyway, thanks for the help. My suggestion to anyone else struggling with this is: first run the drive vendor's diagnostic tool. If the drive is seriously defective, then save your precious time and start from scratch.
It's too bad there isn't a way for Acronis or some other backup tool to back up a bad disk, bad sectors and all.
We sometimes suggest that the backup be run with the "sector by sector" option. That may backup the drive, but would include all errors which would transfer to the new drive upon restore.
run the drive vendor's diagnostic tool. If the drive is seriously defective, then save your precious time and start from scratch.
Um, yeah, that's why in every thread such as this, I always recommend the user run both chkdsk /r and the drive manufacturer's own utility. I recommended that to you in an earlier post.
Um, yeah, that's why in every thread such as this, I always recommend the user run both chkdsk /r and the drive manufacturer's own utility. I recommended that to you in an earlier post.
Yes, thanks. I wouldn't have thought that was important if not for your advice. Thanks!
Strangely, we get many threads here from users who may have disk problems, but refuse to run either chkdsk /r or a drive manufacturer's utility. Some of them become hostile, accusing us of avoiding the real issue, as they stubbornly insist that "the drive is good". Even if the drive may be good, we want proof that it's good, so we can then rule that out and move on to other diagnoses.