Non OS Hard Drive Transfer

Alright so I decided to warranty the drive that gave me an issue yesterday because after doing a CHKDSK it had some unreadable sectors. I want to transfer everything off to the new one before it's too late.

Since this drive is just a storage drive and DOES NOT have the OS on it can I simply just plug it in, add it as a new volume, and just drag, and drop everything from the other drive on it? Then once it's done, just change the letter of the drive to the letter of the other one, and be done? Or, is there another faster way I should be copying everything over to the new drive?

Thanks

If there's not to much data on it, just create a folder on your OS drive, copy the contents and when your new one turns up just send it there.

As it has bad sectors DO NOT copy/clone the COMPLETE drive as they will be moved as well.

Roy

torchwood said:

If there's not to much data on it, just create a folder on your OS drive, copy the contents and when your new one turns up just send it there.

As it has bad sectors DO NOT copy/clone the COMPLETE drive as they will be moved as well.

Roy

Yes there's a lot of data on it. There's 623GB of data on it. Games, applications, videos, music, pictures which all need to be moved over which is why I was asking if I can just drag and drop everything, and reassign the drive letter so the paths are all the same.

I can't create a folder on my OS drive. My OS drive is a 120GB SSD. Even if my OS drive had the room I wouldn't transfer all that stuff over to it, and then move it to the new drive. That's double the work. If I'm going to just copy everything over then I'll plug up the new drive , set it as a new volume, drag and drop everything over, and reassign the drive letter. Shut down, remove the defected drive, put the new one in its place, and start it back up.

I was just assuming there was a better way to copy it over without dragging and dropping as that will take hours.

When you say the COMPLETE drive what exactly do you mean? Like do a clone / image of the drive? I need to be able to move over every single file that is on there so I guess drag and drop is my only choice. I would really hate to have to reinstall everything from scratch which is what I'm trying to avoid.

If worse comes to worst I will just copy over my documents, pictures, and videos, and create a list of all the applications I have installed. I will then install the applications one by one which I really don't want to do but if that's the case then so be it. I just don't know how that will work because when you install applications on a non OS drive it still copies information to the OS drive so not sure how reinstalling stuff on a new storage drive would effect the information on the OS drive. Would it just overwrite it? I really just want to be able to drag and drop everything.

I just googled it and I'm reading that bad sectors are NOT copied that bad sectors are property of the physical material in the drive

RolandJS said:

May I suggest an alternative? Download Macrium Reflect and create a Macrium Reflect usb or dvd boot [best to do this on another computer]. Have MR do a full image [do not check sector copy] on your data partition onto any reliable external media. Then, restore said full image onto your replacement HD. Now, if your data folders and files reside on the same partition as your OS on the source problematic HD --- then you're going to have to find a free utility that will do data folders instead of a full image. I think I remember reading EaseUS or AOMEI has freeware that will do data folders instead of only full images.

In my OP i state that my OS is NOT on this drive. It's just applications, documents, pictures, and videos.

I do not have an external USB hard drive nor another computer.

That is why I mentioned copying it over and reassigning the letter to what the old drive is.

I did download Macrium to have a look at it and there is a clone and image option but I would need the replacement drive hooked up which I don't have yet. However, the other member said the bad sectors would copy as well but I'm finding conflicting information on that.

so....clone or drag n drop????

RolandJS said:

If you drag and drop, just do a few folders at a time; for giant content folders, consider doing one giant folder at a time. I have used TeraCopy quite successfully for copyNpaste operations. It's best to not be doing other major things during such large copying and/or moving operations, whether dragNdrop or copyNpaste.

I was going to do it overnight so I dont have to sit and monitor 630g of data being moved.