Imaging a damaged hard drive


  1. diplo
    Posts : 102
    Windows 7 Profession x64
       New #1

    Imaging a damaged hard drive


    I'm looking for a way to image a windows installation from a machine whose drive I believe to be corrupted. The symptoms are slow, unresponsive windows explorer (file explorer won't launch, start menu search doesn't function). The disk light is always on, and it isn't usable in safe mode either. A chkdsk /f was stuck for almost a week and never completed successfully because I need to move onward.

    My question is: how do I best recover all the installed programs or the system as it exists with the hard drive in this state? Is it possible? Will windows backup (if I can even open it) image bad sectors? I have a feeling the failing sectors of the drive contain critical windows files since basic navigation is almost a dead standstill.

    Thanks in advance.
      My Computer
    Quote Quote

  3. ICIT2LOL
    Posts : 21,004
    Desk1 7 Home Prem / Desk2 10 Pro / Main lap Asus ROG 10 Pro 2 laptop Toshiba 7 Pro Asus P2520 7 & 10
       New #2

    Hello Diplo look I use Ubuntu to retrieve data etc as you will see from this small ditty I made up - I don't know if this will be of any use to you. As well there is an application that is run from within a Linux Mint MATE boot OS but I find this does the job for what I want.

    BOOTABLE UBUNTU

    Make a bootable Ubuntu disk http://www.ubuntu.com/download

    Set the BIOS to boot from theoptical when the machine boots it will show you a screen with TRY or INSTALL> select TRYnot INSTALL

    When it is finished - it takes verylittle time you will get a screen like in the pic .

    Open the drive you want > Userand dig down until you get to the data / settings you may be able to copy /paste the material you want to an external source or other installed drive doingthis.

    I am not sure if it will but I haverecovered tons of data etc using this method both on "dead" or justplain drives that you cannot get data from using Windows.

    I use this by accessing the drive while it is installed in the machine or via an USB to SATA adaptor - see pic

    But this might not be what you are after and in that case I am not aware of how to image whilst in another environment.
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails Imaging a damaged hard drive-usbsata.png   Imaging a damaged hard drive-ubuntu-screen-x2.png  
      My Computer
    Quote Quote

  4. Dave Atkin
    Posts : 543
    Windows 7 Ultimate x64
       New #3

    Personally I would purchase a Disk Imaging Solution like Acronis True Image Home and create an image with that.

    If you find it takes too long to run or crashes then I'd purchase an external SATA USB Caddy and connect it (as well as your damaged hard drive) to an another PC - Running the backup software on there - We do this with most of our failing machines to get an image.

    Have you tried booting the machine in safe mode to see if it still performs the same? I ask because we've come across a number of instances were Windows Update has used massive amounts of Disk IO and CPU.
      My Computer
    Quote Quote

  6. ICIT2LOL
    Posts : 21,004
    Desk1 7 Home Prem / Desk2 10 Pro / Main lap Asus ROG 10 Pro 2 laptop Toshiba 7 Pro Asus P2520 7 & 10
       New #4

    Personally I would purchase a Disk Imaging Solution like Acronis True Image Home and create an image with that.
    Yep that is if you are going to image and I do on a regular basis with Macrium using this tutorial - I was just quoting what I did in case the drive is almost dead or dead and which function is not a part of the Windows system - that I know of?
    Imaging with free Macrium
    Plus of course this software is free and has an option of the full blown program which I have had on my machines and it is very good but I have too man machines to afford the full version
      My Computer
    Quote Quote

  7. diplo
    Posts : 102
    Windows 7 Profession x64
    Thread Starter
       New #5

    Thank you for the responses. While these solutions are probably fine, I was fortunate enough to have found a system restore disk that had been made for this laptop. I've used this to get the machine running again and transfer the backed up files from a USB drive to get it to an acceptable state.
      My Computer
    Quote Quote

  8. Dave Atkin
    Posts : 543
    Windows 7 Ultimate x64
       New #6

    Thank you for updating us diplo. Glad you managed to resolve your issue.
      My Computer
    Quote Quote

  10. ICIT2LOL
    Posts : 21,004
    Desk1 7 Home Prem / Desk2 10 Pro / Main lap Asus ROG 10 Pro 2 laptop Toshiba 7 Pro Asus P2520 7 & 10
       New #7

    Yep hope it all goes well:)
      My Computer
    Quote Quote

  11. mjf
    Posts : 5,969
    Windows 7x64 Home Premium SP1
       New #8

    diplo said:
    Thank you for the responses. While these solutions are probably fine, I was fortunate enough to have found a system restore disk that had been made for this laptop. I've used this to get the machine running again and transfer the backed up files from a USB drive to get it to an acceptable state.
    You said the HDD was damaged. If you didn't replace the HDD I'd run diagnostics on it again or you may have problems again later on.
      My Computer
    Quote Quote

 

  Related Discussions
My computer crashed, I put in my recovery CD and it said "Operating system: Unknown on (Unknown) Local Disk" Then i went into the command prompt and put "diskpart", then "list disk", and it shows up like this: DISKPART> list disk DISK ### Status Size Free Dyn Gpt --------- --------...
The problem is with a Toshiba Laptop and a 500 gb SATA hitachi hard drive (Of which around 80 gb were used, the rest was empty) From which I want to recover some files. Problem started: Completely randomly, the computer was working fine, it ran out of battery and next time it wouldnt start. ...
Damaged Hard Drive/Partition
in Hardware & Devices

Big problem here, I turned off my computer and when I turned it back on, Windows wouldnt start. I put in my recovery CD and it said "Operating system: Unknown on (Unknown) Local Disk" Then i went into the command prompt and put "diskpart", then "list disk", and it shows up like this: ...
Imaging from SSD to Hard Drive?
in Backup and Restore

New member here - hello, everyone. I've just ordered an SSD for one of the laptops, meaning I'll have a nice 7200 RPM hard drive sitting unused. My main desktop is a wonderful mini-ITX system with a single M4 SSD. It is currently backed up, along with all the laptops, to an Asus Windows Home...
With my current backup plan, using Macrium, I schedule a full image every Monday and incremental tues - sun. I also have Windows backup and restore image my had drive every Sunday night. My question is, by working on the computer while the image is being created (visiting websites, working on...
Our Sites
Site Links
About Us
Windows 7 Forums is an independent web site and has not been authorized, sponsored, or otherwise approved by Microsoft Corporation. "Windows 7" and related materials are trademarks of Microsoft Corp.

 © Designer Media Ltd
All times are GMT -5. The time now is 23:27.
Find Us