Cloning a sick harddrive

I have a hard drive that is sick, but mostly still readable. I've spent most of the day and been able to back up pretty much all of the files on the HDD.

The computer came with Windows Vista preinstalled, and I'd like to get that on the new hard drive but I have neither the original CD nor a spare Windows Vista installation CD. What I want to do is clone the whole disc to a new one, and go from there.

Is there a clone program that will copy the hard drive exactly as it reads it - ie skipping bad files rather than popping up an error message and canceling the whole clone operation? I already know to get a hard drive replacement of the same size, but any other info or suggestions would be very much welcomed.

Finally the laptop comes with a hidden restore partition. Is there some way to take advantage of that and use that to rebuild onto the new hard drive?

 

you can try this program. I used it before to make an image of a vista hard drive.
http://majorgeeks.com/EASEUS_Todo_Backup_d6195.html

 

Seagate drives will do this- copy the whole drive to a new Seagate (Maxtor) hard drive- I found it to work well, as long as one of the hard drives are Seagate(Maxtor)
I will find the link to the site so that you can read exactly how it works.
http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/c...1&NewLang=en&Hilite=CLONE+EXISTING+HARD+DRIVE

 

Thanks for the suggestion. The Easus Backup program lets you make images of partitions, and clone the whole drives. The new drive hasn't arrived yet, so I used the image option for now. It keeps aborting when it detects the first bad sector . However so far each of the backup options I've used (Macrium, standard copying, and now Easus) have successfully backed up that restore partition.

When the new drive comes in I'll try the clone options in both programs, baklogics suggestion of DiscWizard, and try just cloning the restore partitions and seeing if it will restore the O/S from there. I only have one USB adapter to connect these hard drives though, so unless I can clone the hard drive to a temporary folder and then to the final destination, I may not be able to try that approach .

I *might* be able to take advantage of the two partitions to boot from one on the new hard drive, and clone the restores to the second.

Anyway, I'll post my results when they come in for future eyes. I still haven't found a backup tool that ignores read errors though, so if anyone hears of one please post it!

 

I was able to get Windows back up and running with the new hard drive and without the Windows CD (and completely legally!). For those in the same boat, here was the successful method.

Problem:
Your computer hard drive is failing and you need to get Windows installed on a new hard drive, but you do not have your Windows CD or any recovery disks. My situation was made difficult by the computer being a laptop, but the solution works fine for desktops too. For this to work you must have a Recovery partition on your failing hard drive, and this partition must be readable. Either I was very lucky, or the fact recovery partitions are rarely accessed makes them less likely to fail.

Solution:
1. Verify that your hard drive is indeed failing by using a boot CD with the hard drive diagnostics from the manufacturer of your hard drive (I recommend the Ultimate Boot CD)
2. Download and install the free utility "EASEUS Partition Master 6.1.1 Home Edition" (Macrium Reflect probably also works, and is also free)
3. Connect the hard drive to a working computer either by connecting the hard drive to your array as any other slave drive, or via a USB connection. The latter is pretty much your only option if it's a laptop hard drive, but they're cheap and fantastic - google "USB 2.0 to SATA/IDE Adapter"
4. Make an Image of the recovery partition
5. Disconnect the failing hard drive, and connect the new one
6. Use the same software to restore the image onto the new hard drive. Be sure not to format the hard drive beforehand and to allow the software to run it's own defaults. However take note that Macrium Reflect actually had one of the default settings wrong, so if this step doesn't work then go back and write down all the flags of the original restore partition and manually enter them for this step.
7. Remove the hard drive, connect it to the computer you are fixing, and boot it up.
8. The restore partition boots to a restore screen and you need to follow the on screen instructions from there, which will be different depending on your computer manufacturer. If you are faced with any options, just remember you are trying to restore the computer to the factory settings.

Hope that helps someone else!

 

94dgrif Does it also resize the partition ?I have a failing hard drive that i want to clone on another drive.If i move it would it match and fix correctly the new hard disk size?

 

I think you're asking whether or not you can use a hard drive of a different size?

The image of the restore partition will always be made and restored as the same size of partition. So if your failing hard drive is 200GB, with 10GB for the restore partition then no matter what size of hard drive you replace it with it will always be a 10GB restore partition.

I imagine that once you boot from the restore partition on your new hard drive, the software will simply format the remainder of the drive, and copy Windows and other software on to it from there. Unlike cloning it wouldn't need to install that software on exactly the same amount of hard drive space, so I really doubt it would matter what size you pick (so long as it's big enough for all the information!).

So in short, I am pretty confident you could use any hard drive of at least 30GB (10GB for the restore partition, at least 20GB for Vista + manufacturer software). Just be warned a lot of older laptops only recognize partitions under about 200GB (anyone know exactly how big?), so if needs be you may have to split a large drive into a total of three partitions before booting to the restore partition.

 

I found that after cloning the extra available space wasn't recognized. I went from a 10g to 160g . I discovered I had to download a free partition manager and resize the drive in order for it to be able to use the available space. Then everything worked fine.