Cloning a failing hardrive

[Ste221]

Hey all,

I've got a storage hard drive that seems to be failing, its slow to access, i'm getting write errors from steam and other programs, in short it all points to it failing, its a 2TB HDD, i have two identical ones so i'm planning to clone the failing one to the 'good' one, however, in finding free programs to clone a HDD, i found one called reflect but it wont touch a HDD with i think bad sectors.

Is there a program out there to let me clone a failing HDD?

Thanks in advanced

 

[fry178]

use crystal disc info to check if the drive is really dying.
if, the get the acronis trueimage software, trial is fine.
just make sure to change the settings/options where you can select to ignore bad sectors.

i still recommend doing a full scan with windows (make sure to mark the 2nd box).
once you cloned it, do a full format, reboot and delete its mbr with testdisc, reboot and do a quick format.
after that, about 30% of drives could be used again, as bad sectors were retired and spare blocks used (if its not exceeding amount of blocks left).

http://crystalmark.info/?lang=en

http://www.acronis.com/en-us/personal/computer-backup/

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

 

[ss202sl]

Just be aware that a failing hard drive can cause OS issues, and these issues can be cloned to a good hard drive.

 

[JaredDM]

The best thing short of a hardware imaging tool would be ddrescue in Linux to clone it. Software (including Acronis mentioned above) generally doesn't work well if the drive is developing bad sectors. Ddrescue has pretty much the best software algorithms for that, but it has to be done in Linux as Windows doesn't provide the raw access to the controller that the program needs to work well.

Here's a tutorial to help with ddrescue.

 

[Ste221]

Stunning responses, thanks to all of you for such rapid assistance, i will try all above as suggested when i can, just to add, i've been running multiple chkdsk E: /f and /r, i have run the /f command too many times to count as suggested by reflect but chkdsk is constantly moving bad clusters and finding more, in my head (probably wrong) its recovering data and moving to another bad sector.

once again thanks, ill try this asap

 

[fry178]

@ss202sl
the os issues dont get cloned, just the defective sectors that cause the issues.

and as long as a drive wasnt bricked, e.g. i had read access to it in Win, i could image all drives with trueimage (while ignoring bad sectors),
and then restore it to a new drive.

 

[USAFRet]

Stunning responses, thanks to all of you for such rapid assistance, i will try all above as suggested when i can, just to add, i've been running multiple chkdsk E: /f and /r, i have run the /f command too many times to count as suggested by reflect but chkdsk is constantly moving bad clusters and finding more, in my head (probably wrong) its recovering data and moving to another bad sector.

once again thanks, ill try this asap

The more you mess with it, the closer it is to actually dying beyond hope. It's not going to get 'better'.

The one and only thing you should do next is to attempt cloning it to another drive, via whatever means you choose.
ddrescue, or any of the better Windows tools.

 

[aldan]

like was said,clone it.you have nothing to lose by trying,and yes,acronis true image is one of the best ive used,and still do.

 

[Ste221]

Hey all,

sorry about the late reply, so i looked into Acronis true image, to clone a drive isn't available on the 'free' version, and when reading up on this people recommend not to use this... or other windows programs for that matter for some reason due to the fact windows cannot do this process correctly (due to the way windows works)

I tried ddrescue, i ran a full... rescue? 15 hours later it finished.

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo ddrescue -f /dev/sdc /dev/sda /media/ubuntu/16GB/backup/log1.log
GNU ddrescue 1.19
Press Ctrl-C to interrupt
rescued: 2000 GB, errsize: 3049 kB, current rate: 2560 B/s
ipos: 520732 MB, errors: 886, average rate: 36311 kB/s
opos: 520732 MB, run time: 15.30 h, successful read: 0 s ago
Finished

the trouble is, the rescue drive i seem to have made is not like the 'failing' one, i cannot access it, i cannot see any details about it in windows (it isn't listed), in disk management it is shown as un-allocated and has no drive letter. I don't think this has cloned it as i would define a clone.

however, when i opened macrium reflect, it lists this 'rescue' drive and shows it as having almost the same amount of used space as the 'failing' drive, there is only 3GB difference (out of 410GB used)

so in my best guess, the cloning worked to a degree but windows can't read it still? what can i do to enable the drive and NOT wipe it?

thanks

 

[USAFRet]

For a successful clone operation (which may or may not work with a failing drive), this:
-----------------------------
Verify the actual used space on the current drive is significantly below the size of the new drive
Download and install Macrium Reflect (or Samsung Data Migration, if a Samsung SSD)
Power off
Disconnect ALL drives except the current C and the new drive
Power up
Run the Macrium Reflect (or Samsung Data Migration)
Select ALL the partitions on the existing C drive
Click the 'Clone' button
Wait until it is done
When it finishes, power off
Disconnect ALL drives except for the new drive
Swap the SATA cables around so that the new drive is connected to the same SATA port as the old drive
Power up, and verify the BIOS boot order
If good, continue the power up

It should boot from the new drive, just like the old drive.
Maybe reboot a time or two, just to make sure.

If it works, and it should, all is good.

Later, reconnect the old drive and wipe as necessary.
Delete the original boot partitions, here:
https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windows/en-US/4f1b84ac-b193-40e3-943a-f45d52e23685/cant-delete-extra-healthy-recovery-partitions-and-healthy-efi-system-partition?forum=w8itproinstall
-----------------------------


Yes, it is a Windows application.
Yes, it works. I've used it exactly like that many. many times.

 

[Ste221]

Thanks for your reply, i ran Macrium reflect, the cloning failed: "clone failed read failed 13-32" this is due to a 'broken pipe', basically due to bad sectors.

Looking through what i have said i haven't made my self clear enough, My harddisk is failing, The hard disk is a secondary disk for programs and large files, not my main C drive. It cannot be cloned by the likes of Macrium reflect and Acronis due to bad sectors, (this isn't free at least). this cannot be repaired with chkdsk either no matter how many times and different commands i use in it. The only way i can see is to use ddrescue however it didn't really clone it as such, most of the data seems there but it was not assigned a drive letter, file structure (ie NTFS) plus i couldn't access anything, it just had data on it that couldn't be accessed!

Any idea guys, thanks for your help and suggestions so far

 

[DR_Luke]

Thanks for your reply, i ran Macrium reflect, the cloning failed: "clone failed read failed 13-32" this is due to a 'broken pipe', basically due to bad sectors.

Looking through what i have said i haven't made my self clear enough, My harddisk is failing, The hard disk is a secondary disk for programs and large files, not my main C drive. It cannot be cloned by the likes of Macrium reflect and Acronis due to bad sectors, (this isn't free at least). this cannot be repaired with chkdsk either no matter how many times and different commands i use in it. The only way i can see is to use ddrescue however it didn't really clone it as such, most of the data seems there but it was not assigned a drive letter, file structure (ie NTFS) plus i couldn't access anything, it just had data on it that couldn't be accessed!

Any idea guys, thanks for your help and suggestions so far

Looking at the report of ddrescue, I'd say you have a pretty good clone. But, the bad sectors might be in the MFT or other system areas. Rather than try to directly access the drive, try accessing the clone with data recovery software, such as R-Studio.

 

[USAFRet]

Thanks for your reply, i ran Macrium reflect, the cloning failed: "clone failed read failed 13-32" this is due to a 'broken pipe', basically due to bad sectors.

Looking through what i have said i haven't made my self clear enough, My harddisk is failing, The hard disk is a secondary disk for programs and large files, not my main C drive. It cannot be cloned by the likes of Macrium reflect and Acronis due to bad sectors, (this isn't free at least). this cannot be repaired with chkdsk either no matter how many times and different commands i use in it. The only way i can see is to use ddrescue however it didn't really clone it as such, most of the data seems there but it was not assigned a drive letter, file structure (ie NTFS) plus i couldn't access anything, it just had data on it that couldn't be accessed!

Any idea guys, thanks for your help and suggestions so far

If it is just a secondary drive, no clone is needed at all.
Just start copying folders over.
Not all at once, just a couple at a time.

If you try to copy everything at once, it will upon seeing those bad blocks. And since the copy function is not linear, you never know what parts got copied and which did not.
Just copy a folder or two at a time.
Then, give the new drive the same drive letter as the old one had.

 

[Ste221]

Hey all,

Thanks again for all your help and suggestions, as was mentioned, thinking about it, yes, i should have simply copied over all the folders! what an idiot!, panicking and not thinking straight i guess!

In the end, as i said, ddrescue did not work initially, it seemed to have copied the vast majority of the contents, even if part of it is corrupted as i'm finding files are now. I was left with a hard-drive with no drive name, letter or file structure. I tried to use windows disk management to assign a drive letter but i ended trying to wipe it as i assumed it would. It did succeed in giving it a letter but i stopped immediately after that before erasing data. I then tried to use macrium reflect again to clone but it doesn't like bad sectors, seconds after beginning it gave up.

After restarting the computer, the drive was recognized, named and lettered and had the same file structure as the failing drive. all the folders and files are there, In the end it seems a culmination of the above programs fixed the issue so thanks again all!