Solved Cannot clone failing hard drive

[GokAy]

Sorry, power blackout while replying to you, and then I forgot to later.

 

[Husaberger]

One more question cyber
As mentioned, I only have 2 motherboard sata slots
Can I still do what you describe?

Sure. Failing HDD is probably already on sata 0 so plug 3rd HDD into sata1. Create image of failing drive to 3rd drive. Replace failing drive with new HDD on sata 0. Boot to cd and restore image from sata1 to sata0.

Note that during restore you'll have the option to copy drive signature. Do so, as some programs use it for licensing activation.

Also note that if you are using the free WD version of Acronis you will need to have a WD drive always hooked up for it to function.

Sorry I'm being so dense but I only see the above working if I have 3 Sata slots avail to have the optical drive, 3rd HD and new HD all plugged in at the same time, or am I missing something?
As you also suggest, I could see using a thumb drive, but I don't have one with that kind of capacity

 

[GokAy]

You can use a USB flash drive for Acronis bootable only?

 

[cyberSAR]

Sorry I didn't see this sooner. I thought you had 2 sata slots for HDD. If you only have 2 total you'll have to either use a USB drive or docking station, or a usb cd/dvd-rom, or try imaging and restoring from within windows. Sorry I can't give much help on that as I've never tried restoring from within Windows.

Just a thought - wonder if you could create a bootable usb acronis disc and use it instead of the bootable cd.

 

[GokAy]

Yes, it is possible (I use Acronis but a paid version, that's why I had the ? at the end, he has to check ). You just need the ISO and a program like Rufus. You can create the ISO from the CD with imgBurn.

 

[jumanji]

Hi Husaberger,

I would think that it would be best to do a sector to sector cloning of your failing system drive to a good drive connected to the other SATA port. That good drive should have a capacity greater than your system drive.

Use SystemRescueCd. Download - SystemRescueCd

See this post on how to do it http://www.sevenforums.com/hardware...nallocated-not-initialized-5.html#post2803849

In step 4 in the above post use the following command

4. Next against the command prompt type:ddrescue -d -f -r3 /dev/sdb /dev/sdc recovery.log [ENTER]
( Note: ddrescue[space]-d[space]-f[space]-r3[space]/dev/sdb[space]/dev/sdc[space]recovery.log)

Note: Replace sdb and sdc with the correct device nomenclature of Source disk(in your case the System disk) and Destination disk ( in your case the other good disk you had plugged into the other SATA port) as obtained in step 3. Make doubly sure.

If cloning is completed successfully, you can then remove your problematic drive and connect the cloned drive in its place. Your system should boot normally.

The advantage: If as you think the system drive is having bad sectors and that was resulting in the frequent BSODs ( that is debatable), some or most of the bad sectors would have been recovered. ddrescue not only clones but also tries to recover the data in bad sectors in its second and third passes.( The first scan will clone the good sectors and may finish faster than the second and third pass trying bad sector recovery.)

A successful ddrescue cloning by dragonballz4 here: http://www.sevenforums.com/hardware-devices/374612-external-hard-disk-unaccessible.html

And that was based on this: http://www.sevenforums.com/general-...d-tool-cloning-failing-hdd-data-recovery.html

Good Luck.

 

[Husaberger]

A big thank you to everyone who provided advice
I know my situation was complicated by the fact that the machine I was working on had only 2 sata ports
I ended up getting the Inateck docking station (FD2002) that had been recommended and successfully cloned the failing HDD on the first try
I had never heard of these devices before but I'm believer now that they have succeeded where Macrium did not
Thank you again for all the help. Hope this helps someone in the future

 

[jumanji]

OK, you chose the easy way out by purchasing a speciality standalone cloning dock Inateck docking station (FD2002). its only special feature is that it can clone offline ( without needing a connection to a PC) Most probably you purchased it in Amazon. Have you read the critical reviews on it there or newegg?

So now you will be replacing the faulty drive with the cloned drive. As a follow-up we would be interested to know how good the cloning was and whether with that cloning all your problems are resolved.

( It will depend upon how it dealt with the bad sectors in the faulty drive. If it skipped the bad sectors or just filled it with zeroes, the data in bad sectors is lost. You will know it only when your system groans (a corrupted system file) or some files/software say corrupted and do not open or run.It is for this very reason backup software like Macrium reflect will refuse to clone a disk with bad sectors.A cloned drive with the same bad sectors data in it will behave in the same way as the faulty drive cloned.These are used to clone only good drives so that the clone works flawless..)

Let us know as and when any of these events occur..