How to clone a defective partition?

chkdsk g: /r reports:
===
CHKDSK is verifying security descriptors (stage 3 of 5)...
Security descriptor verification completed.
Inserting data attribute into file 966.
. . . .
Correcting errors in the Volume Bitmap.
The second NTFS boot sector is unwriteable.
===
This is Disk 1 (DOS: 0) with four partitions; G: is the fourth.
Unsurprisingly, TrueImage|Clone shows an x in a red circle on Partition 4 on both source and destination disks.

Please! - can I clone, and later resize the 4th partition on the destination disk?
- or will the defect be effectively cloned? making the process useless.

The partition holds only image files, so that if the clone results in a manipulable and sound partition, the files can simply be copied from source to destination. (Well: not simply, but it is possible.)

 

see if this article helps solving your problem: http://www.windowsitpro.com/Article/ArticleID/38362/38362.html (follow the 'to go to the article, click here' link)

before that, delete the faulty partition, then, as described in the article, extend whichever one of the remaining partitions to use the whole space.

for me, it worked predictably, especially when the disk was connected to the pc through a USB2 external enclosure.

hth Othmar

 

Hello Roy Lewis,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

When Acronis True Image (any edition) creates an image archive of a partition or a disk that has bad sectors (marked in the file system, e.g. using ScanDisk or chkdsk), it records the information regarding the bad sectors as well. So, if one restores the image archive, you will get these bad sectors on the new location. The sectors will not be actually bad, but they will be marked as bad in the file system (because it has been restored without any changes).

In order to avoid transferring bad sectors to the new location, you should restore the image archive resizing the partition(s). Considering that it is impossible to resize partitions when restoring an image of a whole hard disk, there is no way to avoid restoring bad sectors in such a case. It is only possible to eliminate the bad sectors by restoring the partitions separately with resizing.

Thank you.
--
Irina Shirokova

 

Thank you both for the helpful tips.
I tried using Partition Magic to move and resize the partitions; the error survived.
I cannot restore from an image of this disk; Murphy's Law (and my defective planning) dictate that this error occurred in the timeslot in which no such image exists.
I shall try a Repair of Windows, which one source suggests should fix the matter. Now, if I could just get the PC to boot from the Windows CD instead of its headlong rush into Windows . . . <s>
When (if) I get out of this, I shall report back.

 

You should have a BIOS option which specifies the order in which drives are checked when booting, e.g. floppy, then C:, then CD-ROM.
Just change the sequence so that the CD-ROM drive tries to boot before the C: drive

 

Aha. Good tip about boot order - TVM.
I think that the order is as it should be, but I shall certainly check.

Before seeing that, I used the floppies (yawn) and ran Repair. It worked.
Windows Help gives the general idea.
I have found that I may or may not have to tap an initial [Enter] to start Setup. Then you must choose Repair.
Then (for this purpose) you must choose Manual, and select only the "boot" option. The "second NTFS boot sector" is rewritten.
So the initial chkdsk report of "unwriteable" is misleading; presumably a better written chkdsk could do the job itself.

I think that the idea of extending the penultimate partition, replacing the last, problematic, one may well have worked. Running chkdsk on it produced no error report.

Since (I read that) the second sector is just a copy of the first, I do not understand how one sector would produce the error report and another would not.
Ah, well: the wonderful world of Windows . . . .

Thanks to all!