How to clone a HDD with bad sectors?

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JoJoUK

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I have an E-machines desktop running windows XP. The hard disk is slow and 'clunky' with 4 bad blocks, so I decide to clone it to a newer hard disk of the same size.

Hoping to mark the back sectors, I booted from a HIRONS diagnostics CD and ran chkdsk /f/r

Then I ran Macrium Reflect and set it to clone to the new disk. However, every time it reaches the first bad block it stops the cloning process and says "Read error".

Is there any way I can get it to skip the bad blocks while cloning? Is it not possible to clone a disk with bad blocks?

Thanks.
John
 
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P
I've done this job once before.

For starters, what new HDD are you using as the destination disk? Both WD and Seagate have available on their websites for free download customized versions of Acronis True Image. IF your new HDD is from one of them, get that software downloaded from the correct site. One significant limit is that each of these custom utility packages will only make a clone TO one of their units. For example, the Disk Wizard package from Seagate does not care what old HDD is the Source drive, but you can only clone TO a new Seagate HDD. Similarly for the Acronis True Image WD Edition from the other guys.

Another note for these and other cloning utilities. Many by default will propose to create on the new (Destination)...
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JoJoUK

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Yes, that's the obvious solution, but if I wanted to do that I wouldn't have bothered going down the cloning route. So, I repeat my question. Is it not possible to clone a disk which has a few bad sectors?

I've read about software called 'ddrescue' which is supposed to cope with bad sectors. But I can't find anywhere to download it from. I'm not sure if it's windows based or UNIX or something else. Can anyone help with that?
Thanks.
 
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JoJoUK

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I've downloaded and installed a trail version of Acronis True Image. It can do cloning but only in the paid version. Does anyone have experience of cloning with Acronis? Can it cope with bad sectors?
 
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lonewolf7

lonewolf7

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I failed to understand why do you want to clone ? Every cloning software will include the bad sectors when cloning and would give you read error or something like that. If somehow they get over by the bad sectors they will give some other trouble. And always remember the best way is to install an OS and not to clone it. Cause OS needs to be installed and not transferred. If you want to waste money for Acronis then be my guest. Hope I am clear to you now.
 
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avs262

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dd is a linux tool and can continue copying data when it reaches bad sectors. If you can't find a Windows tool to do the same, download a Linux live CD (Ubuntu will work) and boot your system from it (don't install, instead choose the option to 'rescue the installed system'). Once the OS on the live cd load, start a dd from the source drive to your new drive. Send me a PM is you need exact steps.
 
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Paperdoc

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I've done this job once before.

For starters, what new HDD are you using as the destination disk? Both WD and Seagate have available on their websites for free download customized versions of Acronis True Image. IF your new HDD is from one of them, get that software downloaded from the correct site. One significant limit is that each of these custom utility packages will only make a clone TO one of their units. For example, the Disk Wizard package from Seagate does not care what old HDD is the Source drive, but you can only clone TO a new Seagate HDD. Similarly for the Acronis True Image WD Edition from the other guys.

Another note for these and other cloning utilities. Many by default will propose to create on the new (Destination) drive a Partition the SAME SIZE as that on the old drive, and that usually leaves empty space Unallocated. If you read the manual file that comes with the software, you'll see that you can NOT accept the default settings and use the menu system to change to a different Partition size (like, the whole HDD) on the new drive.

Normally you might download the software onto your OLD HDD and install it there, then run it to make the clone. BUT if the old drive is unreliable, you may want to take different approach, as I did. I installed the software on the C: drive of a DIFFERENT machine, then temporarily installed both the old failing HDD and the new Destination HDD in that machine. Then I ran the software, making VERY SURE that is was set correctly as to which HDD units were the Source and Destination drives for the cloning operation. Don't forget that the DESTINATION unit will be wiped clean and everything on it replaced! So make SURE you have that set right!

When I ran my cloning operation this way, it started to tell me about Bad Sectors and asked what to do each time. After a few of these I got tired and used its menu choices to tell it to ignore all such problems and just keep on cloning until it finished. Yes, the software DID have such a handy choice available. Because of these errors it took a long time to clone an old 100 GB HDD, but it did the job. And here's the good news: so far the clone has worked perfectly! One might expect that Bad Sectors will mean that some of the files copied over will be corrupted, and if any of those are part of the OS, it might not work at all. However, in my case, apparently the Bad Sectors that did exist were not actually in use for any important file, and the clone copy works just fine!

By the way, I really recommend reading the manual file on such software. The customized Acronis versions I mentioned above do a LOT more that just cloning, so it's useful to learn what else they may help you with.
 
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JoJoUK

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Thanks for that AVS. Sadly my internet connection is slow so I probably couldn't download the Ubuntu CD. I do have another Linux installation disk but nowhere easy to install it to at the moment. But I'll keep your solution in mind if all else fails. Cheers!
 
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JoJoUK

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The reason I want to clone is because I've got 170 programs installed on that system (growl...!!!)
 
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JoJoUK

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Thanks for your extensive reply Paperdoc. The disk I want to clone to is a Samsung job. I do have a 500Gb Seagate backup disk which I could partition and try to clone to. If that works I could then clone from that to the other disk. If it works I'll let you know! Cheers.
 
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S Haran

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Linux ddrescue is designed to operate on drives with bad sectors. Linux dd is not. You may want to experiment with ddrescue on spare drives first to see how it works. I can say that I have imaged many Windows drives with bad sectors with good results. So it's worth a try. And it's also possible to detect which files in the clone have "holes" in them due to the bad sectors.
 
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lonewolf7

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Hmmmm, so you are trying to save time and effort, but I think its still better and easy to clean install OS and then install the required programs. And it will be less time consuming and hassle free.

 
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pbtarnum

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Yeah, because fresh-installing XP is totally hassle free... :??: Updates take days sometimes, I can't imagine trying to add 170+ softwares on top of that. Cloning indeed would be faster, if it actually worked. I'm in the same boat here, a failing drive and an installation of 7 I just don't want to do over (again). Clonezilla completely barfed in this process, and then I discovered that the second hand disk I bought for my target is near death too. Wasn't able to test 'em at sale, won't be buying used CL hdd again. I guess it's time for me to find an unused SSD and bite the "fresh install" bullet (again).
 
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L3iGH

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Have you tried using something like Norton Ghost to create am image of your system, then loading that image onto the new drive? I'm not sure how that works with bad sectors though. I've used Ghost with great success but have always created my images before I run into issues.
 
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