Dying EIDE drive, what tool for copying?

[afzal]

Hi all

I have a dying Maxtor Maxline Plus II 250GB 7Y250P0 (from a Lacie external USB drive)

Unfortunately, I have photos on it that I didn't get around to backing up (classic error 101).

GetDataBack hangs on it, and Spinrite recommends copying it first. There, though, is the rub. Smartdrive is reporting imminent failure (Attribute #05). Windows sees it as an unformatted drive (it had NTFS structure).

I have two problems:

1. What tool should I use for trying to copy it that is least likely to cause it to give up althogether and won't suffer a software crash due to Windoz telling it the drive is bad? XCOPY? Norton Ghost (with compression or smart copying?)? Do any of these circumvent WIndows and do it at a Bios level? Can I make them ignore bad sector errors?

2. My second disk is a Samsung Spinpoint 250GB. Although both drives are 250GB, the Samsung apparently has 1GB less space than the Maxtor. My first attempt at copying with Norton 10 aborted with Norton saying the destination disk was too small. Do I need to go purchase a 300GB disk?

Thanks in advance for any help or hints.

 

[blue68f100]

Take a look at Digital Dolly. It's a linux/unix based utility. Not copying unused space you shouldn't have a problem. I believe there is a flag to ignor read errors.

Which version of SpinRite are you using ?? Version 6

 

[afzal]

yes, spinrite 6.06

 

[valis]

I reccomend Easy Recovery Professional. i've used it with much success both in recovering faulty drives as well as getting data off of drives that have been formatted