Dealing with a soon to fail 1T sata drive

[yanivn]

Hello all,

Thank you for time and assistance.

Few days ago my system became extremely slow, I checked the HD status in "Intel Rapid Storage Technology" only to find, to my horror, my HD is reporting an error and it's at risk.
This laptop is 4 years old, I don't see how it could happen but all my professional life is on it. Yesterday I rebooted and it didn't find the desktop file at first, only second reboot helped.

Questions:
1) will defrag help, will it move stuff around to the better parts of the disk?
2) If I ghost the entire drive, isn't it true that it may copy corrupted sectors?
3) I am using less than half of the drive capacity. How do I "move" the windows installation, activation code, laptop drivers and all to a smaller drive if I don't want to buy a new 1T. This is assuming I can make a list or backup the rest of the software on my pc including activation codes etc.
4) Why ME????

Thank you again for your patience and assistance.
Y.

 

[Kaktussoft]

Why you....... because it happens to many people. And still very few people make backups. I advise you to make an image backup asap!!!

Make an image backup of all partitions on that physical disk.
Use macrium reflect FREE (free version is enough) for this job. It can shrink partitions on restore.
Macrium Reflect Free

Restoring is quite easy Restore Disks and Partitions

Advanced Backup Options
Ignore bad sectors
Enabling this option will cause Macrium Reflect ignore any bad sectors on the disk when creating images

 

[yanivn]

Thank you prickly one for your quick response.

I will go through each and every one of the links you provided, but if I may, before a followup:
Since my HD is soon to be deceased I'll need to get a new one and move the image there.
When I use the solution you gave me, will I be able to boot from the dvd (ghost style) in order to "extract" it all and basically continue as if nothing happened?
If I skip the bad sectors, isn't there a chance the image itself will be corrupted and some files may be missing?
Do I need to buy the exact model or just the same size will do? Logically, all the drives in the system work with the old one, so if I restore as-is to a new type of drive, isn't there a failure option?

Thank you again,
Y.

 

[Kaktussoft]

Thank you prickly one for your quick response.

I will go through each and every one of the links you provided, but if I may, before a followup:
Since my HD is soon to be deceased I'll need to get a new one and move the image there.
When I use the solution you gave me, will I be able to boot from the dvd (ghost style) in order to "extract" it all and basically continue as if nothing happened?
If I skip the bad sectors, isn't there a chance the image itself will be corrupted and some files may be missing?
Do I need to buy the exact model or just the same size will do? Logically, all the drives in the system work with the old one, so if I restore as-is to a new type of drive, isn't there a failure option?

Thank you again,
Y.

Yes Yes Yes to all your questions. Of course if you exclude bad sectors in the backup... those sectors won't be restored and things are missing. But they are corrupt now as well!

You can buy a smaller or larger hard drive... as long as it can hold the files.
"isn't there a failure option"? Please explain what you want to know?
You can make a bootable DVD from within the program. But you can better do that on a working machine!
Make the image backup asap!!!!!!!!

 

[yanivn]

You can buy a smaller or larger hard drive... as long as it can hold the files.

I asked because in the old days when we used Ghost, it was a bit-to-bit copy so the HD had to be the same size.

"isn't there a failure option"? Please explain what you want to know?

System image created with 1 type of HD, drivers for it and all. Restoring to a different type (vendor,size) will not make problems?

You can make a bootable DVD from within the program. But you can better do that on a working machine!

How it is possible?... The HD is dying so I am going to make the backup now, rush to the store and get me a new HD. That system will not be operational. I have only the one laptop.
Am I missing something?

Y.

 

[Kaktussoft]

Can't you burn an rescue ISO to DVD? Can you boot from that DVD later on sick machine? Does system see all hard drives on sick machine after booting from DVD? http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/73828-imaging-free-macrium.html

vendor, size of disk don't matter!! No driver needed.