Bad Sectors on HD - Clone to new Drive?

Discussion in 'Acronis True Image Product Line' started by gfilitti, Oct 24, 2006.

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  1. gfilitti

    gfilitti Registered Member

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    Am I pipe dreaming?

    I purchased Acronis True image 8 a while back and haven't had a chance to use it till now.

    My situation is this. I have a workstation with Win2k that has bad sectors, everything seems to be working normally at this point, but I am planning to install a new drive and reload the OS & software.

    I considered attempting a clone, but I have serious doubts it will work. I really dread messing with having to set up the whole system again. I was hoping to find out if anyone has done this successfully, knowing a hard drive had bad sectors.

    Currently, there are 122 bad sectors and one pending (From SMART)
    As you may know as more sectors fail, the machine can experience hiccups which it has.. My primary reason for doing this now is the pediatric software update failed on this machine a week ago and thats how I suspected and discovered the drive had bad sectors. Otherwise everything works normally.

    I did run ScanDisk at boot as well.

    So, am I out of my mind for even considering this? Am I asking for more trouble?
     
  2. bVolk

    bVolk Registered Member

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    I would suggest you create a whole drive image (Disk 1 checked) and then restore all the partitions with resize to the new drive. If partition resize is not what you really need, you can do a minimal resize, but resize must be done so as to prevent the bad sector flags to be transferred to the new drive. (That's how TI9 works, but it's probably the same for TI8.)

    With TI8 you cannot do that directly as you can't include the MBR in a partition restore. You should therefore first partition the new drive into the same number of partitions as there were present on the original drive at the time the image was created (their size beeing irrelevant) and then perform the partitions restore (Disk 1 unchecked, partitions checked one by one) with resize.
     
    Last edited: Oct 24, 2006
  3. gfilitti

    gfilitti Registered Member

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    Let me clarify so I can fully understand.

    The drive in question is a 40gb wide open.

    The new drive is an 80gb and was planning a wide open drive.


    Please advise, and thanks for the reply...
     
  4. bVolk

    bVolk Registered Member

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    Hi again gfilitti,

    I presume that a wide open drive means a drive with a single partition (C: ) on it.

    If so, then:

    - Create a Rescue CD if you didn't already (use the Create Bootable Rescue Media tool in TI).

    - Create an image of the old drive with the box next to Disk 1 ticked (on the source selection screen). The C: partition will be automatically selected too. You should store the image on a second internal HD or an external HD. As your present drive is dying, the option to store the image on the old drive itself and then burn it to DVDs with Nero or Roxio is probably to avoid.

    - Replace the old drive with the new one, set as Master (if ATA/IDE). It probably came already set up as single partition.

    - Boot from the Rescue CD, run Restore, find and select the image file and on the following screen select partition C:, but Disk 1 must be unchecked. Further in the wizard you'll get the option to resize. Drag the right border of the box reppresenting the partition to the end. Accept Active and drive letter (C: ). At the end, Proceed.
     
  5. bVolk

    bVolk Registered Member

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    gfilitti,

    You may want to have a look at the Please Read Before You Post sticky and download the MBR repair tool before you start the whole operation.
     
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