Clone Recovery Partition?

NomNom

NomNom

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Would someone be so kind as to give me some help, I need to clone a recovery partition from a failing hard drive, I am going to be getting a new hard drive that is the same size but a different brand.

I am able to take the hard drive out and connect it to my Pc via external, or I can use a 32GB flash drive I have.

I want to copy the recovery partition from the failing hard drive to either my Pc or my flash drive and then copy it from there to the new hard drive.

I've never done it before so please be noob friendly, what is the best way to do this? :confused:

Update: http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthr...-Partition?p=10606253&viewfull=1#post10606253

Solved: http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthr...-Partition?p=10611769&viewfull=1#post10611769
 
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There are a number of software tools that allow you to copy an image of your failing drive to a new hard drive.

For obvious reasons the new drive must be at least the same size as the old drive: it can [normally] also be larger.

I use a paid-for tool - from Paragon - but I am sure that the others will able to assist with recommendations for free tools.

Else Google is your friend.
 
Clonezilla is the most well known Open Source Cloning tool. You can download the live CD here and there is an example of disk to disk copy here.

Paragon Backup can create a rather useful Linux based boot CD with a GUI that is really easy to use but they seem to have removed the ability to create this from the latest trial versions. If I can find a link to trial or free version that does this, I will post it for you.
 
InvisibleJim said:
Clonezilla is the most well known Open Source Cloning tool. You can download the live CD here and there is an example of disk to disk copy here.

Paragon Backup can create a rather useful Linux based boot CD with a GUI that is really easy to use but they seem to have removed the ability to create this from the latest trial versions. If I can find a link to trial or free version that does this, I will post it for you.
Click to expand...

Thank you sir I will give this a try.

Would I be able to boot Clonezilla off a USB Flash Drive, then connect the new hard drive with an enclosure via USB to the laptop and clone from the broken hard drive to the new hard drive that way?
 
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eh not so sure about Clonezilla. I'd go for Norton Ghost instead...that can def clone partitions across different sized disks.

Maybe Clonezilla can do that now too...but I wouldn't take the chance.
 
That being said, I suspect Clonezilla will offer superior options if the hdd is truly fcked. Pretty sure it can write bad images as is & disregard the errors. Won't be straightforward though.
 
I'm so confused now, what I have done is used the recovery partition to reinstall Windows on the hard drive that supposedly was/is faulty and now everything is fine.

I got a Error 225 from Western Digital Life Guard, and Error 225 says:
Too Many Errors Found - Error count reached a threshold value. There are too many errors detected on this drive to be repaired. Replace the drive. - Replace Drive

Crystal Disk Info showed a yellow dot on the "Current Pending Sector Count" row on the SMART information, it no longer shows this after I did the recovery.

This is what CrystalDiskInfo is showing for the drive:
Untitled.jpg


So now is there something wrong with the drive or not?

What program can I use that will tell me if there is something wrong with the drive or not?

:confused:
 
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So I've run this Western Digital Lifeguard program again, but this time I have connected the drive to my Pc and this is what it reported:

Untitled.jpg
 
NomNom said:
Too Many Errors Found - Error count reached a threshold value. There are too many errors detected on this drive to be repaired. Replace the drive. - Replace Drive

Crystal Disk Info showed a yellow dot on the "Current Pending Sector Count" row on the SMART information, it no longer shows this after I did the recovery.
Click to expand...

What's happening is you have bad sectors which the drive firmware will try to reallocate to some spare sectors it has in reserve. Once it detects a bad sector it will increment the "Current Pending Sector Count" counter until such time as you try to write to that bad sector again, once you try and write to that bad sector it will reallocated the bad sector to one of the ones in reserve incrementing the "Reallocated Sectrors Count" counter and decrementing the "Current Pending Sector Count" as the operation is no longer pending. At some stage you are gonna run out of reserve sectors and then there is not much you can do.

Usually when a drives starts getting bad sectors and they start incrementing it means it's game over for the drive and your data. You could give it a good bashing by formatting and filling it up with data several times and see what happens to the counters. 1 or 2 bad sectors that never increment is nothing to worry about but when the numbers start climbing ditch the drive.
 
ponder said:
What's happening is you have bad sectors which the drive firmware will try to reallocate to some spare sectors it has in reserve. Once it detects a bad sector it will increment the "Current Pending Sector Count" counter until such time as you try to write to that bad sector again, once you try and write to that bad sector it will reallocated the bad sector to one of the ones in reserve incrementing the "Reallocated Sectrors Count" counter and decrementing the "Current Pending Sector Count" as the operation is no longer pending. At some stage you are gonna run out of reserve sectors and then there is not much you can do.

Usually when a drives starts getting bad sectors and they start incrementing it means it's game over for the drive and your data. You could give it a good bashing by formatting and filling it up with data several times and see what happens to the counters. 1 or 2 bad sectors that never increment is nothing to worry about but when the numbers start climbing ditch the drive.
Click to expand...

So getting a new drive is still the right course of action?
 
Don't trust the drive with bad sectors, they get worse (increase) over time, so at some point it will become totally unusable. Don't cancel your order, you need to replace it.
 
Ok sorry guys just need a little more help, I have clonezilla on a USB flash drive now, what I want to do is when I get the new hard drive I will put it in an external enclosure and connect it to the laptop via USB, then clone the recovery partition from the laptop hard drive to the external new one.

So it gives me the following, which one should I choose?

20130612_112725.jpg
 
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The first option will create an image file, the second option clones directly from partition to partition or disk to disk.

When using the first option keep in mind that the destination file system must be able to handle large files. How big is the partition you wanna image?
FAT32: 4GB
NTFS: 16TB (?)

I prefer working with image files as you can easily copy them across devices just like you would any normal file.

If your destination device is big enough you can do a partition to partition and then create a another ntfs partition after the one you just imaged and do a partition to image file. This way you get both formats.
 
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ponder said:
The first option will create an image file, the second option clones directly for partition to partition or disk to disk.

When using the first option keep in mind that the destination file system must be able to handle large files. How big is the partition you wanna image?
FAT32: 4GB
NTFS: 16TB (?)

I prefer working with image files as you can easily copy them across devices just like you would any normal file.

If your destination device is big enough you can do a partition to partition and then create a another ntfs partition after the one you just imaged and do a partition to image file. This way you get both formats.
Click to expand...

The recovery partition is about 18GB big.
 
NomNom said:
The recovery partition is about 18GB big.
Click to expand...

Then you will need to make sure your destination file system is NTFS if you use the first option as the image file will be to big for FAT32.
 
ponder said:
Then you will need to make sure your destination file system is NTFS if you use the first option as the image file will be to big for FAT32.
Click to expand...

So when I get the new hard drive, format it to NTFS and pop it in the enclosure then connect it to the laptop then use the device-image option?
 
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