hard drive dying

The ancient hard drive in my WinXP computer is probably dying. I have a new
drive to install. However, I was hoping to get one more complete
backup/clone last night with Acronis True Image. The backup to an external
USB drive didn't finish, however; and the screen wouldn't unblank. I finally
unplugged the drive, turned off the computer, and turned it back on. It came
on OK and is working OK.

I thought I'd do a backup of at least my datafiles onto a DVD--but the
program I was using found errors (unspecified) and couldn't finish. I do
have a clone from 4 days ago, and I've backed up the most important
datafiles, Outlook Express, and Favorites.

Should I try running CHKDSK/R? Or is there something else I should do
instead that might allow me to make one more backup/clone?

Thank you!

Jo-Anne

Jo-Anne wrote:
The ancient hard drive in my WinXP computer is probably dying. I have a new
drive to install. However, I was hoping to get one more complete
backup/clone last night with Acronis True Image. The backup to an external
USB drive didn't finish, however; and the screen wouldn't unblank. I finally
unplugged the drive, turned off the computer, and turned it back on. It came
on OK and is working OK.

I thought I'd do a backup of at least my datafiles onto a DVD--but the
program I was using found errors (unspecified) and couldn't finish. I do
have a clone from 4 days ago, and I've backed up the most important
datafiles, Outlook Express, and Favorites.

Should I try running CHKDSK/R? Or is there something else I should do
instead that might allow me to make one more backup/clone?

Thank you!

Jo-Anne


My first step, would be to verify the sectors on the disk are still readable.

A program like HDTune from hdtune.com, can display the SMART statistics, and
give you some idea if the drive is failing. It also has an option to scan
for bad blocks.

http://www.hdtune.com/files/hdtune_255.exe

In this HDTune result, you can see the disk has some fairly serious damage. The
owner of this disk would have to work fast, to be able to save anything.

http://i301.photobucket.com/albums/n...T3500320AS.png

Disks come with spare sectors. Each track might have several sectors which can be
substituted for broken sectors. Even when the disk is new at the factory, defective
sectors are detected during testing, and those sectors will be replaced by spares
which are "near" them. So disks are far from perfect, even when they leave the
factory. What you don't want happening on a new disk, is the defect list
growing constantly at a rapid rate, because that means failure is coming
very soon. You'd want a new disk to have a period (a couple years), where
that list of defective sectors is not growing.

Since spared sectors have replaced all the bad ones, if you scan for bad blocks,
on a drive from the factory, it should look "clean". The HDTune scan should remain
all green, until finally a time is reached, where parts of the disk have no spare
sectors left to allocate. And that's when the other colored blocks show up. Then
you're in serious trouble, as the colored blocks could hit in the middle of real
files. (If a bad block was in some white space on the disk, then there might
not be any impact on the user, at least while working file by file.)

You can attempt file by file copying. Since this is your C: drive, your backup
software is probably best equipped to deal with it. You can use a program like
Robocopy from Microsoft, but that might not deal very well with attempting
to copy the C: partition. When I use Robocopy to move my C: drive around,
I boot with my Win2K disk, before attempting to copy the files from my
WinXP partition. If you only have one OS to work with, Robocopy might not
be that useful for working with C:. Usually, backup or cloning software, is
the software that is best prepared to provide its own boot environment, to
safely copy a C: partition. (There is a capability called Volume Snapshot Service
or VSS, that makes it easier to copy a busy partition, but I don't know what
tools use that.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volume_Shadow_Copy_Service

(Also mentioned here.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macrium_Reflect

In any case, no matter what software you use, it needs to generate a log
of all the files it could not copy, so you know what is missing. Robocopy
generates a log, but it isn't the ideal tool for cloning that partition.
Robocopy also has the option to do retries, so it can be asked to try
more than once to copy a file.

If the disk was more badly damaged, such that it would not boot, then
you can attempt to copy the entire partition sector by sector. A utility
like dd_rescue, mentioned here, makes it possible to deal with badly
damaged disks (up until the time where the disk no longer responds to
commands). dd_rescue can skip over stuff it can't read, such that
an attempted copy can complete in finite time. When a disk is badly
damaged, the extreme number of retries the controller does, are a
detriment to finishing the attempted copy in reasonable time.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/Damaged_Hard_Disk

Everyone has their own set of priorities, when it comes to working
with bad disks. My steps would be.

1) Discover a disk is bad (SMART warning message or otherwise).
2) Purchase two disks of the same size or larger than the bad disk
3) Do a sector by sector copy of the bad disk, to one of the new ones.
Use dd_rescue if necessary, to complete this step.
4) Only then, go about the task of recovering as much data as possible,
using the second new hard drive. In this step, you can work file by
file, if the partition is still in good shape.

If step 4 fails, you can always fall back to the sector by sector copy
from step 3, and use that to continue the recovery effort. If you don't have
some kind of backup, before doing further work, the bad disk could
fail completely, before you get any further. I've had that happen
to me, where a disk died before I could work on it the next morning,
so now I respond faster when trouble first shows up.

Check to see if your backup software has:

1) Ability to list the files that would not copy.
2) Ability to specify how many times the tool will attempt to copy
a file.

A tool which quits entirely, at the first sign of trouble, isn't
much good to you.

Paul

"Jo-Anne" wrote in message
...
The ancient hard drive in my WinXP computer is probably dying. I have a
new drive to install. However, I was hoping to get one more complete
backup/clone last night with Acronis True Image. The backup to an external
USB drive didn't finish, however; and the screen wouldn't unblank. I
finally unplugged the drive, turned off the computer, and turned it back
on. It came on OK and is working OK.

I thought I'd do a backup of at least my datafiles onto a DVD--but the
program I was using found errors (unspecified) and couldn't finish. I do
have a clone from 4 days ago, and I've backed up the most important
datafiles, Outlook Express, and Favorites.

Should I try running CHKDSK/R? Or is there something else I should do
instead that might allow me to make one more backup/clone?

Thank you!

Jo-Anne

Did you run True Image from within XP, or have you created the boot disk and
run it from the CD? I've had better results with flaky disks running it from
the CD, but I run it that way anyhow since it's faster, and there's no
chance of a file being in use.

After following Paul's excellent advice, I'd boot from the ATI CD and create
an image that way.
--
SC Tom

On Jul 21, 1:51*am, "Jo-Anne" wrote:
The ancient hard drive in my WinXP computer is probably dying. I have a new
drive to install. However, I was hoping to get one more complete
backup/clone last night with Acronis True Image. The backup to an external
USB drive didn't finish, however; and the screen wouldn't unblank. I finally
unplugged the drive, turned off the computer, and turned it back on. It came
on OK and is working OK.

I thought I'd do a backup of at least my datafiles onto a DVD--but the
program I was using found errors (unspecified) and couldn't finish. I do
have a clone from 4 days ago, and I've backed up the most important
datafiles, Outlook Express, and Favorites.

Should I try running CHKDSK/R? Or is there something else I should do
instead that might allow me to make one more backup/clone?

Thank you!

Jo-Anne

I would not waste any more time. Somehow, connect the new drive onto
this system (preferably with a USB adapter) and clone the failing
drive to the newer one.

"Paul" wrote in message
...
Jo-Anne wrote:
The ancient hard drive in my WinXP computer is probably dying. I have a
new drive to install. However, I was hoping to get one more complete
backup/clone last night with Acronis True Image. The backup to an
external USB drive didn't finish, however; and the screen wouldn't
unblank. I finally unplugged the drive, turned off the computer, and
turned it back on. It came on OK and is working OK.

I thought I'd do a backup of at least my datafiles onto a DVD--but the
program I was using found errors (unspecified) and couldn't finish. I do
have a clone from 4 days ago, and I've backed up the most important
datafiles, Outlook Express, and Favorites.

Should I try running CHKDSK/R? Or is there something else I should do
instead that might allow me to make one more backup/clone?

Thank you!

Jo-Anne

My first step, would be to verify the sectors on the disk are still
readable.

A program like HDTune from hdtune.com, can display the SMART statistics,
and
give you some idea if the drive is failing. It also has an option to scan
for bad blocks.

http://www.hdtune.com/files/hdtune_255.exe

In this HDTune result, you can see the disk has some fairly serious
damage. The
owner of this disk would have to work fast, to be able to save anything.

http://i301.photobucket.com/albums/n...T3500320AS.png

Disks come with spare sectors. Each track might have several sectors which
can be
substituted for broken sectors. Even when the disk is new at the factory,
defective
sectors are detected during testing, and those sectors will be replaced by
spares
which are "near" them. So disks are far from perfect, even when they leave
the
factory. What you don't want happening on a new disk, is the defect list
growing constantly at a rapid rate, because that means failure is coming
very soon. You'd want a new disk to have a period (a couple years), where
that list of defective sectors is not growing.

Since spared sectors have replaced all the bad ones, if you scan for bad
blocks,
on a drive from the factory, it should look "clean". The HDTune scan
should remain
all green, until finally a time is reached, where parts of the disk have
no spare
sectors left to allocate. And that's when the other colored blocks show
up. Then
you're in serious trouble, as the colored blocks could hit in the middle
of real
files. (If a bad block was in some white space on the disk, then there
might
not be any impact on the user, at least while working file by file.)

You can attempt file by file copying. Since this is your C: drive, your
backup
software is probably best equipped to deal with it. You can use a program
like
Robocopy from Microsoft, but that might not deal very well with attempting
to copy the C: partition. When I use Robocopy to move my C: drive around,
I boot with my Win2K disk, before attempting to copy the files from my
WinXP partition. If you only have one OS to work with, Robocopy might not
be that useful for working with C:. Usually, backup or cloning software,
is
the software that is best prepared to provide its own boot environment, to
safely copy a C: partition. (There is a capability called Volume Snapshot
Service
or VSS, that makes it easier to copy a busy partition, but I don't know
what
tools use that.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volume_Shadow_Copy_Service

(Also mentioned here.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macrium_Reflect

In any case, no matter what software you use, it needs to generate a log
of all the files it could not copy, so you know what is missing. Robocopy
generates a log, but it isn't the ideal tool for cloning that partition.
Robocopy also has the option to do retries, so it can be asked to try
more than once to copy a file.

If the disk was more badly damaged, such that it would not boot, then
you can attempt to copy the entire partition sector by sector. A utility
like dd_rescue, mentioned here, makes it possible to deal with badly
damaged disks (up until the time where the disk no longer responds to
commands). dd_rescue can skip over stuff it can't read, such that
an attempted copy can complete in finite time. When a disk is badly
damaged, the extreme number of retries the controller does, are a
detriment to finishing the attempted copy in reasonable time.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/Damaged_Hard_Disk

Everyone has their own set of priorities, when it comes to working
with bad disks. My steps would be.

1) Discover a disk is bad (SMART warning message or otherwise).
2) Purchase two disks of the same size or larger than the bad disk
3) Do a sector by sector copy of the bad disk, to one of the new ones.
Use dd_rescue if necessary, to complete this step.
4) Only then, go about the task of recovering as much data as possible,
using the second new hard drive. In this step, you can work file by
file, if the partition is still in good shape.

If step 4 fails, you can always fall back to the sector by sector copy
from step 3, and use that to continue the recovery effort. If you don't
have
some kind of backup, before doing further work, the bad disk could
fail completely, before you get any further. I've had that happen
to me, where a disk died before I could work on it the next morning,
so now I respond faster when trouble first shows up.

Check to see if your backup software has:

1) Ability to list the files that would not copy.
2) Ability to specify how many times the tool will attempt to copy
a file.

A tool which quits entirely, at the first sign of trouble, isn't
much good to you.

Paul

Thank you, Paul!

I downloaded and ran HD Tunes last night--and now I'm more confused. The one
thing that jumped out at me was the temperature. The range shown was 38
degrees C to 41 degrees C (right now it's 39C, or 102F), which HD Tunes says
is too hot. Could the high heat be causing the trouble? I know the fan is
still going (when I put my hand behind the fan, I can feel the warm air
being moved).

I made screen prints of all four of the diagnostics:

Error Scan showed only one "damaged" square (22 MB) for the whole drive.
Health showed a yellow highlight across Reallocated Sector Count, but the
Status for everything was OK.
I don't know if Benchmark and Info are useful in this context. I can report
back if anything is important.

Any suggestions at this point?

Thank you again!

Jo-Anne

"SC Tom" wrote in message
...

"Jo-Anne" wrote in message
...
The ancient hard drive in my WinXP computer is probably dying. I have a
new drive to install. However, I was hoping to get one more complete
backup/clone last night with Acronis True Image. The backup to an
external USB drive didn't finish, however; and the screen wouldn't
unblank. I finally unplugged the drive, turned off the computer, and
turned it back on. It came on OK and is working OK.

I thought I'd do a backup of at least my datafiles onto a DVD--but the
program I was using found errors (unspecified) and couldn't finish. I do
have a clone from 4 days ago, and I've backed up the most important
datafiles, Outlook Express, and Favorites.

Should I try running CHKDSK/R? Or is there something else I should do
instead that might allow me to make one more backup/clone?

Thank you!

Jo-Anne

Did you run True Image from within XP, or have you created the boot disk
and run it from the CD? I've had better results with flaky disks running
it from the CD, but I run it that way anyhow since it's faster, and
there's no chance of a file being in use.

After following Paul's excellent advice, I'd boot from the ATI CD and
create an image that way.
--
SC Tom


Thank you, SC Tom! I did run True Image from within XP. Tonight I'll try
running it from the boot disk. (I did that only once, a long time ago, to
make sure the boot disk was working and I could do the backup.)

Jo-Anne

"smlunatick" wrote in message
...
On Jul 21, 1:51 am, "Jo-Anne" wrote:
The ancient hard drive in my WinXP computer is probably dying. I have a
new
drive to install. However, I was hoping to get one more complete
backup/clone last night with Acronis True Image. The backup to an external
USB drive didn't finish, however; and the screen wouldn't unblank. I
finally
unplugged the drive, turned off the computer, and turned it back on. It
came
on OK and is working OK.

I thought I'd do a backup of at least my datafiles onto a DVD--but the
program I was using found errors (unspecified) and couldn't finish. I do
have a clone from 4 days ago, and I've backed up the most important
datafiles, Outlook Express, and Favorites.

Should I try running CHKDSK/R? Or is there something else I should do
instead that might allow me to make one more backup/clone?

Thank you!

Jo-Anne

I would not waste any more time. Somehow, connect the new drive onto
this system (preferably with a USB adapter) and clone the failing
drive to the newer one.


Thank you! I'm going to try running Acronis one more time tonight--this time
from the boot disk--and take it from there.

Jo-Anne

"Jo-Anne" wrote in message
...
"SC Tom" wrote in message
...

"Jo-Anne" wrote in message
...
The ancient hard drive in my WinXP computer is probably dying. I have a
new drive to install. However, I was hoping to get one more complete
backup/clone last night with Acronis True Image. The backup to an
external USB drive didn't finish, however; and the screen wouldn't
unblank. I finally unplugged the drive, turned off the computer, and
turned it back on. It came on OK and is working OK.

I thought I'd do a backup of at least my datafiles onto a DVD--but the
program I was using found errors (unspecified) and couldn't finish. I do
have a clone from 4 days ago, and I've backed up the most important
datafiles, Outlook Express, and Favorites.

Should I try running CHKDSK/R? Or is there something else I should do
instead that might allow me to make one more backup/clone?

Thank you!

Jo-Anne

Did you run True Image from within XP, or have you created the boot disk
and run it from the CD? I've had better results with flaky disks running
it from the CD, but I run it that way anyhow since it's faster, and
there's no chance of a file being in use.

After following Paul's excellent advice, I'd boot from the ATI CD and
create an image that way.
--
SC Tom


Thank you, SC Tom! I did run True Image from within XP. Tonight I'll try
running it from the boot disk. (I did that only once, a long time ago, to
make sure the boot disk was working and I could do the backup.)

Jo-Anne

With the disk not being in use except for access by ATI, I think you may
have better results that way.

In response to your reply to Paul, I wouldn't think 39C (102F) is too high.
My EIDE drive runs a steady 40C (104F) and my SATA 48C (118F) and I've never
been warned that those temps were too high, and have had no problems (KOW!)
for the last 3 years I've had them.
--
SC Tom

"SC Tom" wrote in message
...

"Jo-Anne" wrote in message
...
"SC Tom" wrote in message
...

"Jo-Anne" wrote in message
...
The ancient hard drive in my WinXP computer is probably dying. I have a
new drive to install. However, I was hoping to get one more complete
backup/clone last night with Acronis True Image. The backup to an
external USB drive didn't finish, however; and the screen wouldn't
unblank. I finally unplugged the drive, turned off the computer, and
turned it back on. It came on OK and is working OK.

I thought I'd do a backup of at least my datafiles onto a DVD--but the
program I was using found errors (unspecified) and couldn't finish. I
do have a clone from 4 days ago, and I've backed up the most important
datafiles, Outlook Express, and Favorites.

Should I try running CHKDSK/R? Or is there something else I should do
instead that might allow me to make one more backup/clone?

Thank you!

Jo-Anne

Did you run True Image from within XP, or have you created the boot disk
and run it from the CD? I've had better results with flaky disks running
it from the CD, but I run it that way anyhow since it's faster, and
there's no chance of a file being in use.

After following Paul's excellent advice, I'd boot from the ATI CD and
create an image that way.
--
SC Tom


Thank you, SC Tom! I did run True Image from within XP. Tonight I'll try
running it from the boot disk. (I did that only once, a long time ago, to
make sure the boot disk was working and I could do the backup.)

Jo-Anne

With the disk not being in use except for access by ATI, I think you may
have better results that way.

In response to your reply to Paul, I wouldn't think 39C (102F) is too
high. My EIDE drive runs a steady 40C (104F) and my SATA 48C (118F) and
I've never been warned that those temps were too high, and have had no
problems (KOW!) for the last 3 years I've had them.
--
SC Tom


Thank you again, SC Tom! HD Tunes shows that temperature as out of the
normal range--but not critical. I'm relieved.

I'm about to post again about what's been happening as I try to back up my
datafiles.

Jo-Anne

"Paul" wrote in message
...
Jo-Anne wrote:
The ancient hard drive in my WinXP computer is probably dying. I have a
new drive to install. However, I was hoping to get one more complete
backup/clone last night with Acronis True Image. The backup to an
external USB drive didn't finish, however; and the screen wouldn't
unblank. I finally unplugged the drive, turned off the computer, and
turned it back on. It came on OK and is working OK.

I thought I'd do a backup of at least my datafiles onto a DVD--but the
program I was using found errors (unspecified) and couldn't finish. I do
have a clone from 4 days ago, and I've backed up the most important
datafiles, Outlook Express, and Favorites.

Should I try running CHKDSK/R? Or is there something else I should do
instead that might allow me to make one more backup/clone?

Thank you!

Jo-Anne

My first step, would be to verify the sectors on the disk are still
readable.

A program like HDTune from hdtune.com, can display the SMART statistics,
and
give you some idea if the drive is failing. It also has an option to scan
for bad blocks.

http://www.hdtune.com/files/hdtune_255.exe

In this HDTune result, you can see the disk has some fairly serious
damage. The
owner of this disk would have to work fast, to be able to save anything.

http://i301.photobucket.com/albums/n...T3500320AS.png

Disks come with spare sectors. Each track might have several sectors which
can be
substituted for broken sectors. Even when the disk is new at the factory,
defective
sectors are detected during testing, and those sectors will be replaced by
spares
which are "near" them. So disks are far from perfect, even when they leave
the
factory. What you don't want happening on a new disk, is the defect list
growing constantly at a rapid rate, because that means failure is coming
very soon. You'd want a new disk to have a period (a couple years), where
that list of defective sectors is not growing.

Since spared sectors have replaced all the bad ones, if you scan for bad
blocks,
on a drive from the factory, it should look "clean". The HDTune scan
should remain
all green, until finally a time is reached, where parts of the disk have
no spare
sectors left to allocate. And that's when the other colored blocks show
up. Then
you're in serious trouble, as the colored blocks could hit in the middle
of real
files. (If a bad block was in some white space on the disk, then there
might
not be any impact on the user, at least while working file by file.)

You can attempt file by file copying. Since this is your C: drive, your
backup
software is probably best equipped to deal with it. You can use a program
like
Robocopy from Microsoft, but that might not deal very well with attempting
to copy the C: partition. When I use Robocopy to move my C: drive around,
I boot with my Win2K disk, before attempting to copy the files from my
WinXP partition. If you only have one OS to work with, Robocopy might not
be that useful for working with C:. Usually, backup or cloning software,
is
the software that is best prepared to provide its own boot environment, to
safely copy a C: partition. (There is a capability called Volume Snapshot
Service
or VSS, that makes it easier to copy a busy partition, but I don't know
what
tools use that.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volume_Shadow_Copy_Service

(Also mentioned here.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macrium_Reflect

In any case, no matter what software you use, it needs to generate a log
of all the files it could not copy, so you know what is missing. Robocopy
generates a log, but it isn't the ideal tool for cloning that partition.
Robocopy also has the option to do retries, so it can be asked to try
more than once to copy a file.

If the disk was more badly damaged, such that it would not boot, then
you can attempt to copy the entire partition sector by sector. A utility
like dd_rescue, mentioned here, makes it possible to deal with badly
damaged disks (up until the time where the disk no longer responds to
commands). dd_rescue can skip over stuff it can't read, such that
an attempted copy can complete in finite time. When a disk is badly
damaged, the extreme number of retries the controller does, are a
detriment to finishing the attempted copy in reasonable time.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/Damaged_Hard_Disk

Everyone has their own set of priorities, when it comes to working
with bad disks. My steps would be.

1) Discover a disk is bad (SMART warning message or otherwise).
2) Purchase two disks of the same size or larger than the bad disk
3) Do a sector by sector copy of the bad disk, to one of the new ones.
Use dd_rescue if necessary, to complete this step.
4) Only then, go about the task of recovering as much data as possible,
using the second new hard drive. In this step, you can work file by
file, if the partition is still in good shape.

If step 4 fails, you can always fall back to the sector by sector copy
from step 3, and use that to continue the recovery effort. If you don't
have
some kind of backup, before doing further work, the bad disk could
fail completely, before you get any further. I've had that happen
to me, where a disk died before I could work on it the next morning,
so now I respond faster when trouble first shows up.

Check to see if your backup software has:

1) Ability to list the files that would not copy.
2) Ability to specify how many times the tool will attempt to copy
a file.

A tool which quits entirely, at the first sign of trouble, isn't
much good to you.

Paul

Hi, again, Paul,

I've been doing some more backing up to DVDs to try to save what I can, and
here's what I found:

I could back up all my datafiles except for my photo folders. I'm now trying
to back them up one folder at a time to see where the glitch is (so far, one
folder of the four has backed up OK). If the problem is limited to one
particular folder, what would be a good approach to try to deal with the
problem? Here's the error message I got from Easy CD Creator after the
latest failed backup:

E80041898: Write error - [03/0C/00]
E80041925: TrackWriter error - Command retry failed - [T7118]

Thank you again!

Jo-Anne

SC Tom wrote:

"Jo-Anne" wrote in message
...
"SC Tom" wrote in message
...

"Jo-Anne" wrote in message
...
The ancient hard drive in my WinXP computer is probably dying. I
have a new drive to install. However, I was hoping to get one more
complete backup/clone last night with Acronis True Image. The backup
to an external USB drive didn't finish, however; and the screen
wouldn't unblank. I finally unplugged the drive, turned off the
computer, and turned it back on. It came on OK and is working OK.

I thought I'd do a backup of at least my datafiles onto a DVD--but
the program I was using found errors (unspecified) and couldn't
finish. I do have a clone from 4 days ago, and I've backed up the
most important datafiles, Outlook Express, and Favorites.

Should I try running CHKDSK/R? Or is there something else I should
do instead that might allow me to make one more backup/clone?

Thank you!

Jo-Anne

Did you run True Image from within XP, or have you created the boot
disk and run it from the CD? I've had better results with flaky disks
running it from the CD, but I run it that way anyhow since it's
faster, and there's no chance of a file being in use.

After following Paul's excellent advice, I'd boot from the ATI CD and
create an image that way.
--
SC Tom


Thank you, SC Tom! I did run True Image from within XP. Tonight I'll
try running it from the boot disk. (I did that only once, a long time
ago, to make sure the boot disk was working and I could do the backup.)

Jo-Anne

With the disk not being in use except for access by ATI, I think you may
have better results that way.

In response to your reply to Paul, I wouldn't think 39C (102F) is too
high. My EIDE drive runs a steady 40C (104F) and my SATA 48C (118F) and
I've never been warned that those temps were too high, and have had no
problems (KOW!) for the last 3 years I've had them.

It can be a combination of high room humidity and high temperature
that can cause drive failures. If you're in an air conditioned room,
that keeps both the humidity and the air temperature down, which
is "twice as good". Hard drives have a "breather hole", and moist
room air can eventually affect the environment around the platter.
The filter on the breather hole, keeps out particulate, but if
any molecules are small enough, they get through.

I've had one drive failure here, during a period of time where the
room humidity wasn't controlled (failure after about one month under
those conditions). The manufacturer documentation sometimes contains
a temperature/humidity graph, showing the acceptable range. If the
room is humid enough, even 40C can be too hot.

Paul

"Paul" wrote in message
...
SC Tom wrote:

"Jo-Anne" wrote in message
...
"SC Tom" wrote in message
...

"Jo-Anne" wrote in message
...
The ancient hard drive in my WinXP computer is probably dying. I have
a new drive to install. However, I was hoping to get one more complete
backup/clone last night with Acronis True Image. The backup to an
external USB drive didn't finish, however; and the screen wouldn't
unblank. I finally unplugged the drive, turned off the computer, and
turned it back on. It came on OK and is working OK.

I thought I'd do a backup of at least my datafiles onto a DVD--but the
program I was using found errors (unspecified) and couldn't finish. I
do have a clone from 4 days ago, and I've backed up the most important
datafiles, Outlook Express, and Favorites.

Should I try running CHKDSK/R? Or is there something else I should do
instead that might allow me to make one more backup/clone?

Thank you!

Jo-Anne

Did you run True Image from within XP, or have you created the boot
disk and run it from the CD? I've had better results with flaky disks
running it from the CD, but I run it that way anyhow since it's faster,
and there's no chance of a file being in use.

After following Paul's excellent advice, I'd boot from the ATI CD and
create an image that way.
--
SC Tom


Thank you, SC Tom! I did run True Image from within XP. Tonight I'll try
running it from the boot disk. (I did that only once, a long time ago,
to make sure the boot disk was working and I could do the backup.)

Jo-Anne

With the disk not being in use except for access by ATI, I think you may
have better results that way.

In response to your reply to Paul, I wouldn't think 39C (102F) is too
high. My EIDE drive runs a steady 40C (104F) and my SATA 48C (118F) and
I've never been warned that those temps were too high, and have had no
problems (KOW!) for the last 3 years I've had them.

It can be a combination of high room humidity and high temperature
that can cause drive failures. If you're in an air conditioned room,
that keeps both the humidity and the air temperature down, which
is "twice as good". Hard drives have a "breather hole", and moist
room air can eventually affect the environment around the platter.
The filter on the breather hole, keeps out particulate, but if
any molecules are small enough, they get through.

I've had one drive failure here, during a period of time where the
room humidity wasn't controlled (failure after about one month under
those conditions). The manufacturer documentation sometimes contains
a temperature/humidity graph, showing the acceptable range. If the
room is humid enough, even 40C can be too hot.

Paul

Thank you, Paul! The room is air conditioned, and the humidity isn't
terrible--although the Midwest this summer has been VERY humid indeed. Did
you see my two responses to your first response? In case not, here's the
gist of them:

1. I ran HD Tunes, and Error Scan showed only one "damaged" square (22 MB)
for the whole drive. Health showed a yellow highlight across Reallocated
Sector Count, but the Status for everything was OK. I don't know if
Benchmark and Info are useful in this context. I can report back if anything
is important.

2. Today I tried backing up my datafiles to DVDs. Everything was OK except
for some folders containing photos. The Easy CD Creator error messages after
the latest failed backup are
E80041898: Write error - [03/0C/00]
E80041925: TrackWriter error - Command retry failed - [T7118]
I'm not sure what this means, and the program wasn't forthcoming with info.

3. Addendum: Later in the day I was able to back up all the photo
folders--one folder per DVD.

Jo-Anne

Jo-Anne wrote:
"Paul" wrote in message
...
SC Tom wrote:
"Jo-Anne" wrote in message
...
"SC Tom" wrote in message
...
"Jo-Anne" wrote in message
...
The ancient hard drive in my WinXP computer is probably dying. I have
a new drive to install. However, I was hoping to get one more complete
backup/clone last night with Acronis True Image. The backup to an
external USB drive didn't finish, however; and the screen wouldn't
unblank. I finally unplugged the drive, turned off the computer, and
turned it back on. It came on OK and is working OK.

I thought I'd do a backup of at least my datafiles onto a DVD--but the
program I was using found errors (unspecified) and couldn't finish. I
do have a clone from 4 days ago, and I've backed up the most important
datafiles, Outlook Express, and Favorites.

Should I try running CHKDSK/R? Or is there something else I should do
instead that might allow me to make one more backup/clone?

Thank you!

Jo-Anne

Did you run True Image from within XP, or have you created the boot
disk and run it from the CD? I've had better results with flaky disks
running it from the CD, but I run it that way anyhow since it's faster,
and there's no chance of a file being in use.

After following Paul's excellent advice, I'd boot from the ATI CD and
create an image that way.
--
SC Tom

Thank you, SC Tom! I did run True Image from within XP. Tonight I'll try
running it from the boot disk. (I did that only once, a long time ago,
to make sure the boot disk was working and I could do the backup.)

Jo-Anne
With the disk not being in use except for access by ATI, I think you may
have better results that way.

In response to your reply to Paul, I wouldn't think 39C (102F) is too
high. My EIDE drive runs a steady 40C (104F) and my SATA 48C (118F) and
I've never been warned that those temps were too high, and have had no
problems (KOW!) for the last 3 years I've had them.
It can be a combination of high room humidity and high temperature
that can cause drive failures. If you're in an air conditioned room,
that keeps both the humidity and the air temperature down, which
is "twice as good". Hard drives have a "breather hole", and moist
room air can eventually affect the environment around the platter.
The filter on the breather hole, keeps out particulate, but if
any molecules are small enough, they get through.

I've had one drive failure here, during a period of time where the
room humidity wasn't controlled (failure after about one month under
those conditions). The manufacturer documentation sometimes contains
a temperature/humidity graph, showing the acceptable range. If the
room is humid enough, even 40C can be too hot.

Paul

Thank you, Paul! The room is air conditioned, and the humidity isn't
terrible--although the Midwest this summer has been VERY humid indeed. Did
you see my two responses to your first response? In case not, here's the
gist of them:

1. I ran HD Tunes, and Error Scan showed only one "damaged" square (22 MB)
for the whole drive. Health showed a yellow highlight across Reallocated
Sector Count, but the Status for everything was OK. I don't know if
Benchmark and Info are useful in this context. I can report back if anything
is important.

2. Today I tried backing up my datafiles to DVDs. Everything was OK except
for some folders containing photos. The Easy CD Creator error messages after
the latest failed backup are
E80041898: Write error - [03/0C/00]
E80041925: TrackWriter error - Command retry failed - [T7118]
I'm not sure what this means, and the program wasn't forthcoming with info.

3. Addendum: Later in the day I was able to back up all the photo
folders--one folder per DVD.

Jo-Anne



So then it sounds like you rescued all of it ? Did the software you used,
log or record that all files have been captured ? That is what I'd want
to know at this point.

You should be able to restore that to a new drive.

In any case, I wouldn't erase the old drive just yet. The thing about
making optical media backups, is you may be in for a rude shock when
restoring from them.

The two error messages are just one error, a write error. The 03/0C/00
part of that error message, seem to be relatively constant from one report
of that to another (looking at various user reports of that error message).
You can see some suggestions here about what to do.

http://www.cdrlabs.com/forums/anyone...lp-t10414.html

With the optical drives I've got, I usually take care of the firmware updating
first, before starting to use the drive for serious work. I like to burn test
discs, then scan with a Nero diagnostic, to determine whether the burner is
doing a good job or not.

(An optical disc, scanned after being burned. Error rate is low and looks good.
If the graph gets into 1000-10000 range, the disc is probably toast.)

http://gfx.cdfreaks.com/reviews/lg_g...0/image138.png

There is one utility, besides this one, which can check out burned discs,
but it is supposed to work with Liteon drives (program named KProbe).
The utility in this picture, is available for download, so you don't have
to buy it. The author of this tool, also makes it available for download
separately.

http://gfx.cdfreaks.com/reviews/lg_g...0/image134.png

The thing about optical media, is it has three dimensions of error detection
and correction. It allows, for example, a scratch to be present on the optical
disc, and still recover the data. But if the media burning process is flawed,
the errors end up in the 1000-10000 range, while a good burn might be around 10
or so (there are always errors, so some errors are to be expected). If, when
you make a backup, the graph of errors over the surface, have a rising
characteristic, and get worse near the end of the scan, that can have
consequences when you go to do a restore (it won't finish). That's why, if
you think you're making archival copies or "only" copies of computer data,
at the very least you want to scan the disc to see if it is already compromised.
If the burn is showing a high error rate, in the 1000-10000 range, then
it is quite possible that CD or DVD is going to fail in a couple months
of sitting on a shelf.

If I have a spindle of discs I just bought, I might scan one or two of them,
to see if they're OK or not. For media where I've had nothing but problems,
I have to scan every one of them. So the scanning process is "adaptive",
in the sense that you scan every piece of media, if you suspect the
media is bad stuff.

So an error message, when attempting to burn files, tells you that you lost
something. There can be trivial errors when burning though. I've had problems
before, where the "verify" phase of a burn (verify turned on in the burning
program) fails reliably, every time, and yet there is nothing really wrong
with the information content. If I make an ISO9660 file from the media contents
after the burn, it appears to be perfect, with respect to having reproduced the
original content. So I have had occasions where the verify just doesn't work
properly, but there is nothing really wrong with the discs. But if you have
a failure in the middle of a burn, or a later scan of the media shows a
high background error rate, these are not good signs, and you could be
in trouble immediately with that disc, or later when you need it most.

*******

The fact you can see one colored block in the HDTune result, tells you
there were some sectors that could not be spared out properly. Or some
sectors that have gone bad since they were written.

So your primary task right now, is to make sure all the information on
that hard drive is safe. You could eventually attempt to erase the
old drive, and then an HDTune scan may report all is well. (The SMART
statistics may still be bad of course.) If after erasing the drive, a
scan still shows errors, then it would mean there is a bad spot on the
disk, for which there aren't enough spare sectors to fix it.

On modern drives, doing "format" to the disk, doesn't really do a complete
restoration of the surface. Modern disks use embedded servo, meaning there
are bits of information recorded between sectors, that cannot be
re-written or refreshed by the user at home. The servo pattern is written
by a "server writer" arm, which is poked through a hole in the side of the
hard drive at the factory. If you look at some of your 3-5 year old drives,
you may see a silver sticker on the side of the drive, in the platter area.
They shove a "head on an arm" through that hole, and the servo writer
establishes the embedded servo pattern. When you do a "format" on such a
drive, it may rewrite some portion of each sector, but it can't refresh
the servo recording. The format gives an opportunity for any "pending"
sectors to be spared, if they've already been detected as being bad.
The format may give a false sense of security, if the HDTune scan looks
clean after you're finished. A format (or just writing to each sector),
has about the same value in this case. It's a "feel good" operation.

The highest density drives now, no longer use that crude "head on an arm",
so the "port" on the side of 1TB to 2TB drives will have gone missing.
The track density of modern drives is so high, it isn't possible mechanically,
to get an accurate servo pattern using the old method. The drive itself,
now helps with the servo writing process (I haven't seen any details as
to how the arm is held in relatively the correct position, during that
process). It doesn't imply though, that a 1TB to 2TB drive is going to
rewrite embedded servo information, just because they can do it that
way. There may still be factory equipment, controlling the process,
so the solution on modern drives may not be self-sufficient enough to
just rewrite the whole surface. (It would be nice if it did.) It just
means the servo writer port, no longer exists, so there is one less
silver sticker on the side of the hard drive. (The fact there is a
silver sticker present, tells you the HDA holds neither a vacuum
nor is pressurized. The sticker seems to use good adhesive, and
I've not heard of the sticker falling off.)

On much older disks, a format wrote more of the pattern on the disk.
We used to have soft sectors on hard drives at one time, and doing
a "format" on those, really re-wrote the entire surface. The reason
that was possible, is all the "servo" pattern was written to one side
of a platter reserved for that function. (You might have four platters,
eight recording surfaces, seven surfaces for data, and one surface for
servo pattern only.) So formatting in that case at least, was attempting
to write *everything* on seven of the surfaces. But if you have a platter
with a bad spot now, formatting or erasing the sectors really isn't
doing anything other than giving re-allocation a chance to attempt
to spare out bad sectors.

It's one reason, if I see much in the way of complaints, either in
SMART, or in an error scan, I replace the drive immediately. A
"bad spot" in a hard drive can be physical in nature, such as a
ding in the surface, debris floating around inside the HDA or the like.
The drive has some air filter packets, which remove "stuff" ground
off the platters, but if the surfaces of the platters are failing,
you'd find the filters are filthy and there is junk everywhere.
The atmosphere inside the drive is supposed to remain super-clean,
but when the plating on the platter is failing, is can be
pretty dirty looking inside there. And easy to see why there
are so many bad sectors.

It's too bad more discs don't have transparent covers, so
you can look inside and see how they're doing :-) I had one
drive at work, that I was developing a controller for, that
I was actually able to see a malfunction happening, because
it had a transparent plastic cover over the platters.
Those were the good old days :-) In modern times, there
was one version of Raptor drive, that comes with a
transparent window on the drive, and that is about as
close as we get now, to seeing how it's going.

Paul

"Gerald Ross" wrote in message
...
Jo-Anne wrote:
wrote in message
...
Jo-Anne wrote:
wrote in message
...
SC Tom wrote:
wrote in message
...
"SC wrote in message
...
wrote in message
...
The ancient hard drive in my WinXP computer is probably dying. I
have a new drive to install. However, I was hoping to get one
more
complete backup/clone last night with Acronis True Image. The
backup
to an external USB drive didn't finish, however; and the screen
wouldn't unblank. I finally unplugged the drive, turned off the
computer, and turned it back on. It came on OK and is working OK.

I thought I'd do a backup of at least my datafiles onto a
DVD--but
the program I was using found errors (unspecified) and couldn't
finish. I do have a clone from 4 days ago, and I've backed up the
most important datafiles, Outlook Express, and Favorites.

Should I try running CHKDSK/R? Or is there something else I
should
do instead that might allow me to make one more backup/clone?

Thank you!

Jo-Anne

Did you run True Image from within XP, or have you created the
boot
disk and run it from the CD? I've had better results with flaky
disks
running it from the CD, but I run it that way anyhow since it's
faster, and there's no chance of a file being in use.

After following Paul's excellent advice, I'd boot from the ATI CD
and
create an image that way.
--
SC Tom

Thank you, SC Tom! I did run True Image from within XP. Tonight
I'll
try running it from the boot disk. (I did that only once, a long
time
ago, to make sure the boot disk was working and I could do the
backup.)

Jo-Anne
With the disk not being in use except for access by ATI, I think you
may have better results that way.

In response to your reply to Paul, I wouldn't think 39C (102F) is
too
high. My EIDE drive runs a steady 40C (104F) and my SATA 48C (118F)
and
I've never been warned that those temps were too high, and have had
no
problems (KOW!) for the last 3 years I've had them.
It can be a combination of high room humidity and high temperature
that can cause drive failures. If you're in an air conditioned room,
that keeps both the humidity and the air temperature down, which
is "twice as good". Hard drives have a "breather hole", and moist
room air can eventually affect the environment around the platter.
The filter on the breather hole, keeps out particulate, but if
any molecules are small enough, they get through.

I've had one drive failure here, during a period of time where the
room humidity wasn't controlled (failure after about one month under
those conditions). The manufacturer documentation sometimes contains
a temperature/humidity graph, showing the acceptable range. If the
room is humid enough, even 40C can be too hot.

Paul

Thank you, Paul! The room is air conditioned, and the humidity isn't
terrible--although the Midwest this summer has been VERY humid indeed.
Did you see my two responses to your first response? In case not,
here's
the gist of them:

1. I ran HD Tunes, and Error Scan showed only one "damaged" square (22
MB) for the whole drive. Health showed a yellow highlight across
Reallocated Sector Count, but the Status for everything was OK. I
don't
know if Benchmark and Info are useful in this context. I can report
back
if anything is important.

2. Today I tried backing up my datafiles to DVDs. Everything was OK
except for some folders containing photos. The Easy CD Creator error
messages after the latest failed backup are
E80041898: Write error - [03/0C/00]
E80041925: TrackWriter error - Command retry failed - [T7118]
I'm not sure what this means, and the program wasn't forthcoming with
info.

3. Addendum: Later in the day I was able to back up all the photo
folders--one folder per DVD.

Jo-Anne

So then it sounds like you rescued all of it ? Did the software you
used,
log or record that all files have been captured ? That is what I'd want
to know at this point.

You should be able to restore that to a new drive.

In any case, I wouldn't erase the old drive just yet. The thing about
making optical media backups, is you may be in for a rude shock when
restoring from them.

The two error messages are just one error, a write error. The 03/0C/00
part of that error message, seem to be relatively constant from one
report
of that to another (looking at various user reports of that error
message).
You can see some suggestions here about what to do.


http://www.cdrlabs.com/forums/anyone...lp-t10414.html

With the optical drives I've got, I usually take care of the firmware
updating
first, before starting to use the drive for serious work. I like to
burn
test
discs, then scan with a Nero diagnostic, to determine whether the
burner
is
doing a good job or not.

(An optical disc, scanned after being burned. Error rate is low and
looks
good.
If the graph gets into 1000-10000 range, the disc is probably toast.)

http://gfx.cdfreaks.com/reviews/lg_g...0/image138.png

There is one utility, besides this one, which can check out burned
discs,
but it is supposed to work with Liteon drives (program named KProbe).
The utility in this picture, is available for download, so you don't
have
to buy it. The author of this tool, also makes it available for
download
separately.

http://gfx.cdfreaks.com/reviews/lg_g...0/image134.png

The thing about optical media, is it has three dimensions of error
detection
and correction. It allows, for example, a scratch to be present on the
optical
disc, and still recover the data. But if the media burning process is
flawed,
the errors end up in the 1000-10000 range, while a good burn might be
around 10
or so (there are always errors, so some errors are to be expected). If,
when
you make a backup, the graph of errors over the surface, have a rising
characteristic, and get worse near the end of the scan, that can have
consequences when you go to do a restore (it won't finish). That's why,
if
you think you're making archival copies or "only" copies of computer
data,
at the very least you want to scan the disc to see if it is already
compromised.
If the burn is showing a high error rate, in the 1000-10000 range, then
it is quite possible that CD or DVD is going to fail in a couple months
of sitting on a shelf.

If I have a spindle of discs I just bought, I might scan one or two of
them,
to see if they're OK or not. For media where I've had nothing but
problems,
I have to scan every one of them. So the scanning process is
"adaptive",
in the sense that you scan every piece of media, if you suspect the
media is bad stuff.

So an error message, when attempting to burn files, tells you that you
lost
something. There can be trivial errors when burning though. I've had
problems
before, where the "verify" phase of a burn (verify turned on in the
burning
program) fails reliably, every time, and yet there is nothing really
wrong
with the information content. If I make an ISO9660 file from the media
contents
after the burn, it appears to be perfect, with respect to having
reproduced the
original content. So I have had occasions where the verify just doesn't
work
properly, but there is nothing really wrong with the discs. But if you
have
a failure in the middle of a burn, or a later scan of the media shows a
high background error rate, these are not good signs, and you could be
in trouble immediately with that disc, or later when you need it most.

*******

The fact you can see one colored block in the HDTune result, tells you
there were some sectors that could not be spared out properly. Or some
sectors that have gone bad since they were written.

So your primary task right now, is to make sure all the information on
that hard drive is safe. You could eventually attempt to erase the
old drive, and then an HDTune scan may report all is well. (The SMART
statistics may still be bad of course.) If after erasing the drive, a
scan still shows errors, then it would mean there is a bad spot on the
disk, for which there aren't enough spare sectors to fix it.

On modern drives, doing "format" to the disk, doesn't really do a
complete
restoration of the surface. Modern disks use embedded servo, meaning
there
are bits of information recorded between sectors, that cannot be
re-written or refreshed by the user at home. The servo pattern is
written
by a "server writer" arm, which is poked through a hole in the side of
the
hard drive at the factory. If you look at some of your 3-5 year old
drives,
you may see a silver sticker on the side of the drive, in the platter
area.
They shove a "head on an arm" through that hole, and the servo writer
establishes the embedded servo pattern. When you do a "format" on such
a
drive, it may rewrite some portion of each sector, but it can't refresh
the servo recording. The format gives an opportunity for any "pending"
sectors to be spared, if they've already been detected as being bad.
The format may give a false sense of security, if the HDTune scan looks
clean after you're finished. A format (or just writing to each sector),
has about the same value in this case. It's a "feel good" operation.

The highest density drives now, no longer use that crude "head on an
arm",
so the "port" on the side of 1TB to 2TB drives will have gone missing.
The track density of modern drives is so high, it isn't possible
mechanically,
to get an accurate servo pattern using the old method. The drive
itself,
now helps with the servo writing process (I haven't seen any details as
to how the arm is held in relatively the correct position, during that
process). It doesn't imply though, that a 1TB to 2TB drive is going to
rewrite embedded servo information, just because they can do it that
way. There may still be factory equipment, controlling the process,
so the solution on modern drives may not be self-sufficient enough to
just rewrite the whole surface. (It would be nice if it did.) It just
means the servo writer port, no longer exists, so there is one less
silver sticker on the side of the hard drive. (The fact there is a
silver sticker present, tells you the HDA holds neither a vacuum
nor is pressurized. The sticker seems to use good adhesive, and
I've not heard of the sticker falling off.)

On much older disks, a format wrote more of the pattern on the disk.
We used to have soft sectors on hard drives at one time, and doing
a "format" on those, really re-wrote the entire surface. The reason
that was possible, is all the "servo" pattern was written to one side
of a platter reserved for that function. (You might have four platters,
eight recording surfaces, seven surfaces for data, and one surface for
servo pattern only.) So formatting in that case at least, was
attempting
to write *everything* on seven of the surfaces. But if you have a
platter
with a bad spot now, formatting or erasing the sectors really isn't
doing anything other than giving re-allocation a chance to attempt
to spare out bad sectors.

It's one reason, if I see much in the way of complaints, either in
SMART, or in an error scan, I replace the drive immediately. A
"bad spot" in a hard drive can be physical in nature, such as a
ding in the surface, debris floating around inside the HDA or the like.
The drive has some air filter packets, which remove "stuff" ground
off the platters, but if the surfaces of the platters are failing,
you'd find the filters are filthy and there is junk everywhere.
The atmosphere inside the drive is supposed to remain super-clean,
but when the plating on the platter is failing, is can be
pretty dirty looking inside there. And easy to see why there
are so many bad sectors.

It's too bad more discs don't have transparent covers, so
you can look inside and see how they're doing :-) I had one
drive at work, that I was developing a controller for, that
I was actually able to see a malfunction happening, because
it had a transparent plastic cover over the platters.
Those were the good old days :-) In modern times, there
was one version of Raptor drive, that comes with a
transparent window on the drive, and that is about as
close as we get now, to seeing how it's going.

Paul

Thank you, Paul, for all the information you've provided! I do plan to
replace my hard drive. I'm just panicking at the thought of doing it
myself.
I have a new drive--and today I did manage to clone the old one with
Acronis
True Image. It's possible that I've lost some data--but if so, I think it
was in one of the photo folders, and I backed up that folder to another
computer a while ago.

What I finally did after making all the backups I could make on
DVDs--just
to have something on hand in case things went haywire--was run CHKDSK/R.
It
finished running sometime during the night. I looked at the log today,
and
it included the following:

58548892 KB total disk space.
37114892 KB in 205298 files.
166120 KB in 5575 indexes.
4 KB in bad sectors.
622372 KB in use by the system.
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
20645504 KB available on disk.

4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
14637223 total allocation units on disk.
5161376 allocation units available on disk.

I'm hoping this means that CHKDSK repaired those sectors or moved the
data
elsewhere. In any case, I ran Acronis True Image afterwards, and this
time
it made a successful backup.

Now all I have to do is gently remove the old drive, put in the new one,
plug in my backup USB drive, run the Acronis boot disk to get into the
program, and restore the latest clone. AND hope that I do it right.

Does this sound like a reasonable approach?

Thank you again!

Jo-Anne


I did a similar thing except I attached the new hard drive via a USB
adapter and made a mirror with Acronis to the new drive. Then I just
swapped drives and it booted right up and has been going 2 years without a
hiccup. Actually not a swap, I just removed the old drive and put the new
one in.

--
Gerald Ross
Cochran, GA

Never use a tool that's more
intelligent than you are.




Thank you, Gerald! I didn't know I could attach the new drive via a USB
adapter so I could clone directly to it. Could you point me to what it
should look like, so I can buy one? Would I need to put the new drive into a
USB enclosure first?

Thank you again!

Jo-Anne

Jo-Anne wrote:


Thank you, Gerald! I didn't know I could attach the new drive via a USB
adapter so I could clone directly to it. Could you point me to what it
should look like, so I can buy one? Would I need to put the new drive into a
USB enclosure first?

Thank you again!

Jo-Anne


You select a USB solution, based on what you expect to be doing in the future.

Disks come in 2.5" IDE, 2.5" SATA, 3.5" IDE, 3.5" SATA. If you buy a
hard drive enclosure, you make sure the enclosure type is intended for
the disk type.

(Example of a 2.5" SATA drive enclosure, where the drive power comes from
the USB bus.)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817707121

*******

For temporary setups, such as you've got right now, you don't really
need an enclosure. Just the cabling is what you can use.

For example, this kit attaches to three different kinds of hard drive
connectors (universal). You lay the hard drive carefully on the table,
so it won't overheat or get bumped or shocked while the platters are
spinning. The nice thing about this particular unit, is I don't see
reports of the power adapter dying on it. Many of these devices now,
have "too-cheap" AC adapters.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...tem=12-161-002

http://www.apricorn.com/product_deta...e=family&id=39

http://www.apricorn.com/pdf_product_...ire-manual.pdf

There is one report of the bundled EZ Gig II software,
erasing an already installed Acronis. Just use your Acronis,
instead of loading the included software.

*******

Docking stations, function something like a "toaster". They're
generally only for SATA hard drives, which means a docking station
isn't as flexible as a USB cable kit. The fit of the drive to
the adapter might be slightly more convenient, but it
doesn't handle all possible drive types.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817145078

*******

I think the Apricorn solution, is about the best choice for
general purpose "clone my busted drive" operations. Make sure
to buy a brand, where the AC adapters don't catch fire or
melt. The thing is, it's easy to make good adapters, so
the attraction to cut corners on these must have been
overpowering for the businessmen. Really stupid. It means
the consumer has to do more research, to get a product
which isn't a fire hazard.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16812161002

Good luck,
Paul