HDD failure recovery with Acronis ?

[Osprey]

Having only recently upgraded to W7 ... the HDD with the OS on it has now become terminal ... will only boot in safe mode.

Fails diagnostics and fails a repair.

 

Quick Test on Drive 1 did not complete

Status code = 07 (Failed read test element)

Failure Checkpoint=97

 

Extended test: FAIL

Error code 08- Error was detected while repairing bad sectors.

 

 

My 'hope' is that although it fails to start (other than safe mode) if I clone teh drive onto a new HDD then I may be OK, as the fault is HW.

 

Western Digital supply a copy of Acronis to allow you to clone HDD onto a new HDD

 

Just wondered what is the practical way of this ...

 

I do have a external NAS drive that would have enough room for an image ... would the practical way be to install faulty drive ... in a good PC, make clone to NAS and then put in new HDD and apply image ?

I'm guessing I can't do it 'within' the PC as it would need at least 3 HDD installed at same time ... only cabled for 2

[isolatedvirus]

i am uncertain of the capabilities of acronis (personally ive never used it, and preferred to use clonezilla, and symantec ghost when clonezilla wasnt available.)

 

If it has the same features as most other imaging software, you should be able to clone directl from one HDD to another, without requiring an image to be made. Usually this is done over the network via unicast or multicast traffic. If you cannot perform the image operation this way, then your way will work fine. Once again i am unsure of acronis' features, but it *should* be able to create an image, and drop all unused space from the image. Assuming you have a 500GB HDD, and have only used 120GB, it will create a 120GB image, instead of a 500GB one.

[RandyL]

I think you might be going about this the wrong way. Acronis will make an image that you can apply once you reinstall the OS. But here's why I think this is a bad idea.

 

The hard drive you want to clone has bad sectors which is what is causing the issues. If you clone it then apply the image you might well be just recreating the problem on the new drive. In essence you will have an exact copy of a corrupt system.

 

Your best bet is to copy all your data to an external source. Once you reinstall Windows on the new drive copy your data back.

 

The time to make a backup image is when everything is perfect in case something goes wrong later. I think your well past that point.

[danzil]

Hi.

i agree with Randy, back up the drive, isntall a new one, install the OS as fresh then reinstate your data.

the longer you keep accessing this drive the greater the risk of the drive fialing completely, this could prove a costly to recover, or may become corrupt beyond recovery.