cloning a corrupt hard disk

Zaph0d

I have a corrupt IDE hard disk. It fails chkdsk. I can still slave it and reach all the files but two. I'd like to clone or ghost it onto a new disk and chuck the old one out or else repair the existing disk.

I downloaded the manufacturer's disk utility program but it also failed to fix the error.

How do I clone the disk, specifying that the two bad files should be ignored? If I just copy all the good files off the disk onto another disk, is this the same as cloning the disk? would it boot?

I have a legit copy of norton ghost 2003. If I ghost the disk, would it create a corrupt image?

Thanks

juliuspret

If you ghost the corrupt drive the corrupt files will probable be ignored.

Also if the drive has a lot of bad sectors then dump it...but if no bad sectors are reported then reformat it and see what happens.

How old is the drive anyway...most should last years before problems like above occur!

astrofool

Is it a system drive?

If not, its probably alot easier to just copy/paste, and even if its a system drive, a reinstall may be a safe bet anyway, with a new non-broken drive.

Talliesin

juliuspret wrote:

How old is the drive anyway...most should last years before problems like above occur!

You're forgetting about the so-called "infant mortality" of many components. Drives are much more likely to die in the first couple of years than in the rest of the next decade, so things aren't quite as the the average servicable life figures could lead you to believe.

Zaph0d

juliuspret wrote:

How old is the drive anyway...most should last years before problems like above occur!

3 years old, 80GB seagate

astrofool wrote:

Is it a system drive?

If not, its probably alot easier to just copy/paste, and even if its a system drive, a reinstall may be a safe bet anyway, with a new non-broken drive.

It is a system drive. I don't want to lose the installed apps.

juliuspret

Talliesin wrote:

You're forgetting about the so-called "infant mortality" of many components. Drives are much more likely to die in the first couple of years than in the rest of the next decade, so things aren't quite as the the average servicable life figures could lead you to believe.

Believe me I know all about that "infant mortality"!!!

Bought a 200GB Maxtor DiamondMax 10 at Christmas...the bloody thing failed the smart test within a week.
Sent it angrilly back to komplett and after numerous emails finally received a refund which I then used to purchase a 300GB version of the above drive.

juliuspret

Do a ghost on it.....and then view the contents with the Ghost viewer to make sure everything is where it should be.

Honestly though, you may need to do a fresh install anyway, as these things occur and a format/install would normially be the best cure.

Wandering Dazed

juliuspret wrote:

Do a ghost on it.....and then view the contents with the Ghost viewer to make sure everything is where it should be.

Honestly though, you may need to do a fresh install anyway, as these things occur and a format/install would normially be the best cure.

I presume you've tried chkdsk /f which will attempt to remap the bad blocks? Which may still leave the data corrupt but will mean the disk is ok...

Zaph0d

Yes, I tried chkdsk /f

Are there any other software disk repair utilities that don't rely on chkdsk?

SennaFan

do an xcopy in dos mode and that should do the trick or use a piece of software called laplink

Capt'n Midnight

I've had ghost and dd fail on drives with bad sectors, and then backed up /restored with NtBackup :eek:

I'm guessing it's windows XP/2K - so use NtBackup to backup to drive 2
Then setup drive 2 as the master and install windows on it. Then restore from the backup file. - choosing to overwrite all files ( you replace the clean install with the backup. )

You can't use ASR as it wipes the drive - so you'd need another drive.

if it was windows 98 you could use Xcopy and Lcopy to do it

Zaph0d

Sorry, captain, I'm not sure I follow you:

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

I've had ghost and dd fail on drives with bad sectors, and then backed up /restored with NtBackup :eek:

Do you mean you succeeded in backing up & restoring a corrupt hd using ntbackup where ghost and dd failed?

I'm guessing it's windows XP/2K - so use NtBackup to backup to drive 2
Then setup drive 2 as the master and install windows on it. Then restore from the backup file. - choosing to overwrite all files ( you replace the clean install with the backup. )

I'll try this.

Thanks again