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Safest way to backup failing hard drive?
tl;dr: my dad's drive is failing and I want to back it up without pushing it too hard. Should I do an image over manually saving files and should I use normal mode, safe mode, BIOS, a separate computer, or something else? Thank you
I wasn't able to find a thread that directly answers my question so I'm hoping you guys can share some of your expertise.
My father's desktop's hard drive is failing. He got a warning yesterday, but I do not know if it was a specific error or what to look for in event viewer anyway. It's 6+ years old and it uses XP i think, so I'm surprised it held so long.
I'm worried that backing up the drive in normal mode will make it worse, so I'm trying to find the least taxing way. I've always manually picked and saved files to avoid viruses and junk files. Would it be quicker/better to do an image here though? What about safe mode, BIOS, or a separate computer?
My drive started to fail about 6 months ago, but it turned out to be something else and I used seatools to write 0s all over. I did a ton of stuff before trying to diagnose and fix so I know a little about chkdsk, using bios, safe mode to diagnose, using windows repair, S.M.A.R.T. tests with USBs, etc. I'm focusing on saving the files before I try to rescue the drive though.
Any thoughts and help would be awesome. Thanks