Cloning a bad Hard Drive?

Gimpymoo · 24 Nov 2007 at 18:54

Which software can be used to clone a bad hard drive.

Is readable within Windows but often freezes when trying to copy all files.

Any software which will clone the drive yet ignore parts of the HDD it cannot read as to not freeze and continue copying?

Thanks.

Burnsy2023 · 24 Nov 2007 at 19:05

Why don't you run a chkdsk before copying to map all unreadable sectors before trying a copy?

Burnsy

Duke · 24 Nov 2007 at 19:20

Ghost can be used to copy a disk which has errors, you need to use the "/fro" switch (this is for the DOS version by the way, never used the Windows version).

Gimpymoo · 24 Nov 2007 at 19:53

Burnsy2023 said:
Why don't you run a chkdsk before copying to map all unreadable sectors before trying a copy?

Burnsy

Have tried and after taking an age to run the checkdisk, it still hangs/restarts.

bledd · 25 Nov 2007 at 11:12

i'd try using an acronis boot disc, to acronis true image it to a file another hard drive

Gimpymoo · 25 Nov 2007 at 17:23

Thanks for the reply.

When creating an image, the system hangs as though it is unable to read data.

sammie377 · 25 Nov 2007 at 18:06

Acronis is what I use it gives many options, download a trial it's worth a look.

RobH · 25 Nov 2007 at 18:12

If you can afford it (£40 ish) then Spinrite is almost guaranteed to fix that. I had a laptop drive that wouldn't boot the OS but could be read in Windows as a slave drive, copying the files off was taking minutes for just a few MB and some files couldn't be read at all. I ran Spinrite on it overnight and it olny got about 45% through so I decided to try it with what had been repaired. I managed to copy all of the data off it reading at full speed with no problems. You're not going to get software to read that drive in its current state because the actual workings of the disk are buggered, you need something like Spinrite (OS & file system independant) to actually work with the low level of the disk.