[SOLVED] Hard drive about to die

[CHANGEDUDEUSF]

I have a hard drive that is about to die. It is the hard drive for my OS. It has given me 7 good years so I think I got my moneys worth. I obviously want to get my data off of it. So what is the best way to do this with hopefully as little strain as possible on it? Do I want to just load the OS then straight copy and paste to an external HD or a big flash drive? I have a couple of massive flash drives. I usually use my external HD's just trying to think of all my options. Do I want to load up a live cd and copy and paste that way so there is less OS strain on the HD? Use another computer to create an image? Is there some better option I am not thinking of?

 

[USAFRet]

Starting RIGHT NOW....2 things to do:

1. Copy any personal data off to some other physical drive
2. Do a full drive image off to a whole other drive. Macrium Reflect will do this easily.

 

[kanewolf]

I have a hard drive that is about to die. It is the hard drive for my OS. It has given me 7 good years so I think I got my moneys worth. I obviously want to get my data off of it. So what is the best way to do this with hopefully as little strain as possible on it? Do I want to just load the OS then straight copy and paste to an external HD or a big flash drive? I have a couple of massive flash drives. I usually use my external HD's just trying to think of all my options. Do I want to load up a live cd and copy and paste that way so there is less OS strain on the HD? Use another computer to create an image? Is there some better option I am not thinking of?

You should have been backing up any critical data long ago. Any disk can fail at any time.
You could install a second disk and clone or backup the drive to that one.
There is no special method to "minimize stress".

 

[Ralston18]

Do you have all important data on that drive backed up to at least 2 x other locations? Have you verified that the data is both recoverable and readable?

With an "about to die" hard drive anything you do could cause data loss.

What leads you to believe that the drive is about to die?

Drive: make, model, capacity, how full?

What problems? Have you run the manufacturer's diagnostic software on the drive?

All in all my recommendation is a clean OS install and then copy the data back to the new drive.

https://forums.tomshardware.com/faq/windows-10-clean-install-tutorial.3170366/