Failing Drive, advice please.

[DampDog]

My ole system is nigh on 10 years old and beginning to show its age. I switched on last evening to be met with a blue screen and it running a check on drive D: It eventually booted and I ran error check from within windows and then chkdsk and both confirmed I have some unreadable addresses.

C: = 250Gig Samsung SSD
D: = 1Tb Samsung HDD (partitioned D, E)

So fortunately the failing the drive is not the boot drive, it's a 1Tb that is partitioned D, files I don't use much: I have backups) & E: (windows backup/recovery files : Not backed up)

So what is the easiest most pain free way to replace it and not screw everything up. No doubt I have a few odds and sods/old apps on D: that I've forgotten about.

Is it as easy as remove the old drive and replace it? I'm thinking I may not bother partitioning it and leave it as a 1Tb D: this time.

Or is it bite the bullet and clean install?

Edit. System booted up this morning without issue.

 

[Armageus]

Buy another drive that's at least as large

Install new drive alongside current drives

Install Macrium reflect (or create a bootable macrium reflect USB) and then clone the existing drive to the new drive, then shutdown and disconnect the old drive.

The new drive should then still have the existing D and E partitions, and everything should work correctly

 

[DampDog]

@Armageus.

Cheers for that you're a star.

 

[DampDog]

Just as a thought. If I chose to install separate drives for D: E: instead of a single partitioned, drive can Macrium do that?

 

[Armageus]

Just as a thought. If I chose to install separate drives for D: E: instead of a single partitioned, drive can Macrium do that?

Yes I'm pretty sure you can copy individual partitions to new drives (and expand them to fill the new drive)

 

[DampDog]

Nice one. Overclockers is only just up the road from me, I'll pick up a drive later. Thanks again.