how do I recover data from a non responsive hard drive?

It doesn't looks good. 496 GB error size means the disk media is so bad. I am afraid that the data stored on the disk can't be recovered - even by a professional data recovery company . As a last resort, please try the below steps.

1. Press Ctrl + c to abort the cloning.

2. Try the below command.

ddrescue -d -f -R /dev/sda /dev/sdb /media/sdc1/recovery.log


The -R option will try to read sectors in reverse order. If it also hangs, rescuing this disk will be beyond the capability of "ddrescue".

okay... I'll try that now.

thanks.

looks like it's a no... unless I did something wrong.

Since we removed -r3 option, "ddrescue" will only try to read good sectors and totally avoid bad sectors. Since all good sectors are already copied by previous operation ( which is only around 3 GB ), there are no more sectors left to copy and "ddrescue" finished the cloning.

I should say that this type of heavy media damage is not common. A well equipped and highly experienced data recovery firm mght be able to rescue the data. They usually use specialized hardware cloning tool which may be able to successfully copy the sectors to another disk.

An example professional disk cloning tool - Hard Drive Data Recovery

okay, so basically, there is nothing left for us to do. The data is lost.

so I guess I move on. How do i set up my new drive as my main drive, and my working old one as just storage?

what do I need to copy over and how do I do it?

To use the new 2 TB as the boot disk, i would recommend the below steps.

1. Disconnect the current boot disk to avoid complications. Connect the 2 TB to the first SATA port - this is important as system will always prefer to boot from the disk connected to port one.

2. Install Windows usually. I would recommend one partition dedicated for OS - 150 to 200 GB will be more than enough. Rest of the remaining space can be partitioned to one or two data storage partitions.

3. After the install finishes, connect the 500 GB disk as slave and copy all data stored on it to the new one. After that use "Disk Management" to delete the existing partitions and create a single 500 GB partition. Now this disk can be used as a backup - keep a copy of all important data on both new disk and the old 500 GB disk. If one fail in an unfortunate event ( hope to not ), your important data will be safe on the other one.