Solved Random BSOD in WIndows 7 Kernel-Power Event ID 41

[essenbe]

I've never used the Macrium for cloning, I use it for imaging. But, I know others who have cloned with it and have been very successful. I use Paragon Migrate ($19.95) and it never fails. But none of them will put your data at risk. Cloning is basically just copying. The sector by sector does sound like it may be cloning. You'll have to read the instructions and make sure it is talking about an OS drive. There is a difference in cloning an OS and a data drive. But, I would assume a sector by sector copy would be a OS drive. Cloning is not risky to the data by any program I've ever seen. it is simply a copy, but in an exact manner as the program has to be aware of boot sectors and several other things.

As for your first question, yes that's exactly what I meant. You can either do that, do a clean install of both OS's or you could gamble and try to change it and see. If it won't boot. it will BSOD. You can then go back and into bios and change it back, and usually no harm done. I think Windows 7 would be fine trying it, but I don't know how XP will deal with it. Windows 7 is much more forgiving than XP.

 

[DrillHead]

Perfect. I'll submit my RMA and await my new drive.

One last question for now: Since some of my studio apps use files on my smaller 250GB drive would there be any harm in removing it so I have the bay to clone the other drive and then putting it back after the the image is done?

I ask because I figure I'll have to change drive letters around to clone and then change them back after swapping out the drives. That shouldn't cause any issues should it?

 

[essenbe]

That should work.

 

[DrillHead]

Hi Again. Just received my replacement drive from Seagate. I should have expected this... they sent me a "repaired" drive. I find that a little bit odd since the drive I'm replacing has also been "repaired" even though it was purchased brand new.

My thoughts are that I would be just as well off keeping my existing drive and moving forward by purchasing a new drive and just imaging the old one as a back up plan. I can by a brand new drive of the exact same specs for around 50-60 bucks. If I keep the one they sent me and the existing drive I'm out 80 buck plus tax. What are your thoughts on that?

Additionally how large drive do I actually need to image 1TB drive that currently has less than 500GB of used space?

Thank you in advance.

 

[essenbe]

A good imaging program, will only image the used portion of the drive, no matter what size it is. But you wouldn't want to buy a new drive that would instantly be full. My personal opinion, the larger drives fail more often than smaller drives. I don't really like over 1 TB drive size. Over that you are gambling. I have 4 or 5 2 TB drives, but I use them as external backups. So, they usually last longer because they are actually running only when you do a backup and I do backups to 2 or 3 drives. That seems to make them last longer. If I were you, I would get a 750 GB drive at least. That should give you 250GB of free space. If I were doing it, I would get a 1 TB drive. The Seagate Barracuda and Western Digital drives are pretty good and pretty fast for 1 TB drives and pretty reasonable. Also remember, if you get a drive more than 80-85% full, it tends to slow it down.

Whatever you do, make sure you back everything up externally. I don't like the ready made external drives. I have 3 or 4 external docks, which are great. You use a regular internal drive and can swap drives in 30 seconds, if you are very slow. 15 is more like it. This is what I like. If you have it, eSATA is much faster than USB 3.0. Just trust me on that. If you don't have eSATA, I'll show you how to get it for about $10. I hope that answered your questions. If not, ask again, I'll try harder.


By the way, Macrium is about as good an imaging program there is, and the price is better. Free is hard to beat.

 

[DrillHead]

Any thoughts on whether or not to keep the replacement drive even though it has been repaired by Seagate? The label says "Certified Repaired HDD".

I have had no crashes since "repairing" the bad sector on my existing drive. Just wondering if you think it's worth the trouble to clone and wipe the ld drive since I will be getting another drive for imaging anyways?

 

[essenbe]

Tht's a decision you will have to make. But, If it were me and it was going to cost me $50-$60, I would buy a new drive instead of a repaired drive. You can get a new 1 TB hard drive for somewhere in that price range. Western Digital Blue drives and Seagate Barracuda drives are in that price range for 1 TB drives. Strange thing is, 500Gb are about the same price, at least close enough where you are within $10 to double the size. That is what I would do. The final decision is yours. Having said that, I have used factory recertified drives before and they lasted for years. but, If I'm going to pay the equivalent of a new drive, I would opt for new.

 

[DrillHead]

Hi essenbe (hope your still around).

I managed to get back to this. I had disconnected my XP drive until I got my new drives. I tried using Marcium under windows 7 to clone my XP drive to my new hard drive. I've tried twice with Marcium and the clone failed both times this is the log file.

I re-ran chkdsk /r to make sure the drive was error free but the clone still failed with the same "Clone failed - Read failed - 22 - Broken pipe" message..

 

[DrillHead]

Here's a screen of the log

 

[DrillHead]

Thought I would try imaging the drive and then restoring through the Marcium/Win PE rescue disc but I am a little concerned about how to do this. Can I image the XP drive while in Windows 7 and then restore it to the new drive from Win PE and make the new drive boot just like my old XP drive? All of the tutorials I have read and videos make the process look simple but then they also made the cloning process look simple... and that failed.

I also tried to use "HDD copy tool" to copy the drive (and ignore any bad sectors) but that got part way through and just stopped responding all together. It created the 2 partitions from my XP drive on the new drive but it hung up and ended up having to cancel the action and the new drive wouldn't boot when I tried it. Maybe I'm not understanding something right?

Would appreciate some help. Thank you!

Any ideas as to why this is failing?

 

[essenbe]

My only thoughts are that the damaged drive, even though it says it was repaired, some of the data was damaged in the process and/or there is corrupted files on the drive. Therefore the clone nor the imaging can read it in order to copy it.
That's my opinion. Am I correct that you have no problems with Windows 7 but are having issues with XP? Please refresh my memory. As I recall, you are doing music editing and need XP. For that reason, you need the XP OS. You have pretty much ruled out a VM or upgrading you windows to run XP Mode. Windows 7 'should' be capable of running an X86 program. If you will look in your Windows 7 main drive you will see Program Files and Program Files X86. Program files is for X64 programs and Program Files X86 is for X86 Programs. The real question is is the program you use Windows 7 compatible? I suspect not, but you could check. I further believe that at least part of your problem is that your sata controller is in Raid mode. If your Windows 7 has iaStor (Intel Rapid Storage controller) installed, it would boot if you changed the BIOS to AHCI mode. I have no earthly idea what XP would do.

I also may be wrong, but I think you have been slightly confused, to a degree. When you run sfc /scannow, if you run it from the Windows 7 OS, it is only checking the Windows 7 OS. It does not even look at the XP drive. Whatever you do in Windows 7 has nothing to do with Windows 7, conversely, whatever you do in the XP OS has nothing to do with Windows 7. The only caveat to that is the imaging and cloning. You can for instance clone any drive on your computer from Windows 7, if it happens to be XP, that makes no difference just so long as it can read what is on the XP drive. It appears that it cannot, which leads me to believe that the XP drive is damaged beyond repair.

 

[essenbe]

I would like to say one other thing. When you test a drive and the diagnostic program says I found a damaged sector but repaired it. It did not repair it. What it does, to the best of my understanding, is tell the controller board, this particular sector is damaged, so do not write any data there. That is what it calls repaired. Still, any data that was in that damaged sector still cannot be read in most circumstances. Further, what happens in most cases, is that damaged sector continues to grow and get larger and larger without the controller board knowing it, unless you run and fail another diagnostic test. Then it repeats the process of 'repairing' it, but just tells the controller a larger area is damaged. This will usually continue until the damaged area becomes so large, the hard drive cannot function any longer. I hope I explained that right.

 

[DrillHead]

Very helpful indeed and thank you for responding so quickly. You recalled pretty much everything right.

While I continued to work on it today (I had the day off from work) I thought of a few of these things you mentioned. I was nearly resolved to just image the damaged drive and then restore from Win PE to see if that would work. But I decided to take one last effort with the program I had intended to use initially: AOMEI Partition assistant. Remember me asking you about "sector by sector" copying?

Well that worked perfectly on the first try. I then remove the failing drive, changed my boot sequence to the fresh new drive and voila! It booted just like it was the old drive. I had to change some drive letters around to match my old set up and re adjust the location of my swap file in XP and everything is working great.

Now I will use the extra 1 TB space to fully image my windows 7 drive. I will then reset my XP install to image to the additional 1 TB drive from my warranty claim and should be good to go for the moment. Planning an additional external drive for redundancy in the very near future...

 

[DrillHead]

Your first advice was the best advice about the drive reporting bad sectors and eventually failing.

I am very glad I took action. The data I nearly lost was irreplaceable.

You have my sincere gratitude.

 

[essenbe]

I'm very happy you have it running well and everything worked out for you. If I was able to help you along in some small way, you are most welcome. But, it was you who did all the work. Unless your failing drive has completely failed, I would wipe it as clean as possible before sending it back, after copying my data off. Yes, I'm a little Paranoid, I guess. At any rate, I'm glad you are computing the way you like to. If there is ever anything else we can do to help, feel free to call on me or anyone else here.

 

[DrillHead]

Yes I plan to wipe it several times at least. A little paranoia is healthy methinks.

I do have one more question. When imaging Windows 7, I'm doing so from within Windows 7 assuming if I need to restore I will use Win PE to do so. Should I also be in XP when imaging XP? Or can I makes the image while in 7 and still restore a bootable XP drive from Win PE if needed?

 

[essenbe]

You ned to create a bootable rescue disk from whichever imaging program you are using. I think that will work better. You can try it from within 7 or XP, I am sure they are set up to do it, most are. What it will usually do is tell you to reboot and restore the image during reboot. if I understand what you are doing, it cannot restore an image while the disk is in use, so whether within Windows doing it during reboot or form a bootable rescue disk, it is still doing it while not in use.
If you like, I can get the person, WHS, who wrote the tutorials on Macrium to come and answer your questions. He will be happy to do so, if he is available.

 

[DrillHead]

I understand that the restore process happens from the rescue disk. I'm asking about the actual imaging of my XP drive (2 partitions). Should I image that drive from within XP or is it okay to image it while in 7 and then restoring from the rescue disk and have the drive still boot the way it does now?

 

[essenbe]

Well, I don't know what Imaging program you are using. But, I use Macrium and Paragon and you can make the image from within the Operating System. As I understand it, I believe you can restore from within the OS too, but I believe the odds are better of a good restore if done from the rescue disk. But, I always make the image from within the OS. I use several OS's, I always image them from within Windows 7, mainly because 7 is my main OS. But, I don't think which OS you image them from matters, but you can also image them from the rescue disk, if you wanted. So, in case I wasn't clear. I make the image from within the Operating System. I restore the image from the rescue disk or Win PE environment.

 

[DrillHead]

Okay. I understand.

Can I image 2 partitions as part of the same image? I want to image my C:/ and F:/ partitions (the only 2 partitions on my XP drive) to the same backup image and restore them both together as needed. C:/ = OS F:/ = Apps

Is that even possible?