Replacing a failing hard drive while keeping my OS, software etc.

Hi everyone,

The hard drive on my HP Pavilion g6-1331sf laptop is failing and I would like to replace it.

I would like to :

• image to an external hard drive before buying the new internal drive: I will only get one if the imaging procedure works all the way through
• image all the partitions except the biggest one, D:, so as not to tire the drive out too much (I'm attaching a screencap of Disk Management)

Is it possible? Which tool should I use? Do you have a list of things I should check before I get started?


(I'm planning to get a regular hard drive, probably a 1 TB.)


Thanks! :)

I would do a clean install often bad blocks will be written to the new hard drive second you don't know the state of Windows if the disk is faulty

Thanks guys.

samuria said:

I would do a clean install often bad blocks will be written to the new hard drive second you don't know the state of Windows if the disk is faulty

Interesting. It would mean a lot more work though... Maybe I can try the imaging-restoring first, then, if it doesn't live up to my expectations, do a clean install instead?

fireberd said:

Image the entire drive, not just certain partitions. It won't cause a problem with the old drive.

Really? Because I am in the process of backing up my data again, and I already have 2 more reallocated sectors than I did a few hours ago... And if I'm understanding the attached screencap correctly, I'm getting dangerously close to the end of the reserve. I don't think the drive will enjoy the imaging process at all, I'm honestly afraid it just won't work all the way... That's why I wanted to image as little stuff as I could. Is that not possible?

If it records bad blocks it will write those to the new drive and there is no simple fix it's just not the risk

So... a full year later, I actually did this! The hard drive behaved for close to a year, and then started losing a few more sectors, and it seemed to accelerate a bit, so I cloned it to a new one this week. I'm discussing that there.

Anyway, I was rereading my previous threads today, and this comment made me go "huh" in a way it hadn't last year! A bit of a lightbulb moment...

RolandJS said:

I hope you are doing a one-pass full image of each of the necessary partitions of that increasingly problematic hard-drive. Back in the old days, Windows 3.1 - Windows 98SE, I would suspect a fork in the road -- either a physically-failing hard-drive or an under-powered hard-drive 'cause the power supply is not giving the HD enough juice to run efficiently. I'm not sure if this fork in the road applies to your computer.

The thing is, the trouble seemed to start when I bought a Wd external hard drive last year. I stupidly tried to copy some system and program files that were in use to it, and it created some instability. Several times, it seemed I lost sectors not long after using that drive. And it was a 2.5'', a so-called "self-powered" drive that my laptop was actually powering, the only 2.5'' drive I ever used on that laptop too! Needless to say, I haven't used it in over a year now.

Even in the year since, in which I have used a newer 3.5'' external hard drive instead, I wonder if trouble didn't mostly happen around the times I was using it...

So, Roland, could you tell me more? Could there be any link between the use of those external hard drives and the damage to my internal drive? What do you think might have happened? Did some power issue damage my old hard drive? And... could the same thing happen to the new one now?

Thanks, Roland.

RolandJS said:

I hope you have a local data recovery person who can walk you through recovering what can be recovered and move forward.

No need for that luckily, I have the full image of the drive plus backups, including older versions... Since I had indeed gone beyond the reserve, I suspect there's a handful of corrupt files, which I'd quite like to identify to replace them with versions from the old backups... But hopefully, nothing was lost completely. :)