Helping cloning a dying HDD

[Wallboy]

I have a 500GB HDD that's about 7 years old that I've been using as my primary and has 30,000+ hours on it according to S.M.A.R.T and it's finally giving out. I started getting windows lock ups and bad sector errors in the event log and I checked the S.M.A.R.T and the current pending count keeps going up by around 50 each day now. At this point i've unplugged the drive, installed windows onto my WD Green storage drive temporarily so I can still use my computer. I managed to get all my important data off the drive and then completely unplugged the drive for now.

I plan on buying a new 1TB HDD next week to replace it, and what I want to do is try cloning the dying drive over to the new 1TB. I was wondering what the best tools are to do this. Windows 7 built in tools? third party tools?

Thanks.

 

[Anshad Edavana]

I managed to get all my important data off the drive and then completely unplugged the drive for now.

I don't recommend cloning in your case because -

1.You already managed to rescue important data.

2. Usually the cloning process will skip copying bad sectors and instead write zeros to the target. As a result the cloned OS may not work as expected due to partially corrupted files.


Being said that, Linux command line tool "ddrescue" is the best utility to clone a failing disk with bad sectors. However the user should be somewhat familar with Linux command line. So i would recommend Windows based "HDD Raw Copy Tool" which is specifically coded to deal with failing disks.


HDDGURU: HDD Raw Copy Tool

 

[Wallboy]

Yeah I wasn't sure what the difference was between cloning and raw copying. I just though I'd at least try copying/cloning the failing drive to the new drive and at least see if windows is able to boot or at least repair itself enough so that it can boot. That way I don't have to reinstall all my programs which isn't a fun time on a fresh OS install lol. If it doesn't work, then no biggie, I'll just reinstall a fresh copy of windows on it. I'll give that tool a try when the new HDD is here, thanks.