Restoring drive image to a repaired HD

I have just undergone an agonizing reload of all my applications after repairing an HD with a bunch of bad sectors that prevented Win XP from booting. This has made me rethink my backup strategy and evaluate disk image technology, like Acronis or BootItNG.

However, I am unsure if this would work in the event of another HD bad sector problems. My question is this:

Assume I experience another bad sector problem on my HD and I then repair the HD using the manufacturer's diagnostic tools. Will a disk image restore to this HD when the bad sectors have been quarrantined (repaired)? That is, if the image file has data to be restored to sector "nnn" and sector "nnn" is not available due to the repair, will the restore still work around this?

I am running a Dell 8400, with WinXP Pro, SP2;
Seagate 160 GB SATA boot disk; WD 250 GB HD for secondary storage, and an external networked HD for backups using Windows BU utility.

Thanks for any insights.

 

That's a good question! You can probably find your answer by visiting the web site for the imaging software you are investigating. I'm sure they will have FAQ's or a forum or at least an email address to which you can send your question(s). If you encounter another sector problem on the same drive, I would seriously consider replacing it versus repairing it again. Most HD's have a minimum 3 year warranty (Seagate is 5 years) and they should replace a HD w/ a continuous sector problem for free.

hopperdave2000

 

if you began getting bad sector, it's strongly recomended to run some disk utilities to quarantine them, after this immediately backup all the staff and store image on the other storage device dvd disks, other HD both external and internal possible. for imaging i'd recomend to use true image, the best backup prog IMO for now.

 

hopperdave2000,

Thanks for your comments.

- I contacted Acronis TI and they stated they did not expect any problems restoring to a HD with re-allocated sectors.

My Seagate HD is being replaced under warranty, so I don't anticipate bad sector problems of this magnitude for quite some time.

I will add a drive image process to my backup scheme. I will image a partition with just the OP system, programs, and Doc & Settings so that I can restore with all programs functioning. Then I can restore all data to another partition using NTBackup utility.

 

Plaphon,

I have indeed ran Seagate's disk utilities to repair 97 bad sectors on the drive. After this, my system was able to start up but many features did not immediately work.

I then used the XP restore process to return to a restore point just prior to the system crash. It appears that all my critical applications are again working as they were at the time of the restore point.

I am now creating new backups of the data, programs and system state so I can restore to my new HD.

Thanks for your input.

Ray

 

I received this info from TeraByte Unlimited (BootItNG) regarding restoring an image to a HD that has had bad sectors reallocated (repaired):

"Sector relocation handles it transparently so it would work if that's what
it "fixed" - if the bad sector is still there and hasn't been relocated then
you'd get a write error during restore."

Therefore, I guess the restore action will try to write to the old sector on the HD and then the HD reallocation program will redirect the write to the appropriate good sector.

This sounds like a winner to me! Now, where was that imaging application...

 

Noting your list of drives, including networked volumes, are you using windows dynamic volumes?

Since you have had premature Hd failure, perhaps you should also review their operating environment. Although Dells are usually pretty well built, alterations or dust buildup may cause airflow obstructions and overheating. The hard drives are of course also mounted the wrong way up in the Dimension towers.

Studio T

 

Studio T,

My drives are basic volumes, not dynamic. I have not considered using dynamic volumes so I am unfamiliar with how and why they could be valuable. Would converting to dynamic volumes help with creating fault tolerance system? Any thoughts would be useful.

I am using SpeedFan to help monitor my HD temps. I have checked the temp periodically of my boot drive and found it to average 48C. The Seagate spec is 50C max, so I have never been overly concerned about this drive getting too hot. I have noticed the temperature increased by about 3-5C when I added a video card with on-board fan. Prior to this, the HD ran about 44-45 C.

 

My comments were I hope helpful extras to the orign of your thread.

Dynamic volumes help are primarily used to access the large and maybe common storage capacity of a connected server. Hopefully the server is also backed up and won't in any case fail at the same time as your pc. The difficulty lies in having some vital stuff on your local pc and some on the server so is not recommended practise for amateur use.

Your temperature measurement demonstrate my point improve the cooling and keep things clean and clear. Mybe a baffle to deflect the graphics air stream away form the hard drives?


Studio T