Help with failing Hard Drive

[Bob_asks]

Hello,
Sony Viao desktop runing XP home with SATA HD. I get a SMART warning that the system drive is bad, to backup and replace. I can get the drive to run only after removing it and placing it in a refrigerator for several hours. I installed a new (secondary) SATA drive and formatted it successfully (after coaxing the "old" drive with refrigeration. I've tried using Norton Ghost to clone, however after it sets up the clone process, the software reboots the system. When it reboots, the SMART error appears again and the boot disk won't bootup.

Is there any cloning software that does not involve a system restart when processing?

Any other suggestions would be appreciated (bios does not have a SMART disable function).

 

[COLGeek]

Download and burn Clonezilla to CD. Use it to copy your original HDD to your new HDD. Very easy to use and very good at what it does. Just google it.

Essentially, you just boot from the Clonezilla CD and then step through the options. They are very easy to understand and you should be able to just use default selections.

Good luck!

 

[dataq1]

resolution : Eventually the refigerator trick no longer worked. So I bought two new sata drives (about 55$ each). Installed XP pro (from another installation) on one drive and installed HDclone. Started the computer with the failing drive disconnected, and booted from the new drive with a as yet unactivated copy of XP and the spare HHD in third port. After machine was fully booted, reconnected the failed drive, scanned for new hardware, and brought the failed drive back on line. From there just HDclone the failed drive to the blank drive, made the boot partition active.

shut down the computer, disconnected the failed drive, placed the cloned drive in first port, adjusted the bios and SUCCESS !

 

[COLGeek]

resolution : Eventually the refigerator trick no longer worked. So I bought two new sata drives (about 55$ each). Installed XP pro (from another installation) on one drive and installed HDclone. Started the computer with the failing drive disconnected, and booted from the new drive with a as yet unactivated copy of XP and the spare HHD in third port. After machine was fully booted, reconnected the failed drive, scanned for new hardware, and brought the failed drive back on line. From there just HDclone the failed drive to the blank drive, made the boot partition active.

shut down the computer, disconnected the failed drive, placed the cloned drive in first port, adjusted the bios and SUCCESS !

Glad you found a solution that worked for you. Good job!