How to Mirror a Hard Drive?
 

I have a Microsoft Windows XP system, and chkdsk found some bad sectors. I would like to mirror the
whole drive, boot sector and all, before the drive fails completely.

There's a lot of programming, and it would take days to reinstall all the programs and upgrade from
the backup disks created when the computer was new. Any help would be appreciated.

Dan Kirk

Re: How to Mirror a Hard Drive?
 

"dan kirk" <dan_at_foxkeep.org> wrote in message
news:4cfe3ea7$0$14827$bbae4d71@news.suddenlink.net ...
>I have a Microsoft Windows XP system, and chkdsk found some bad
>sectors. I would like to mirror the whole drive, boot sector and all,
>before the drive fails completely.
>
> There's a lot of programming, and it would take days to reinstall all
> the programs and upgrade from the backup disks created when the
> computer was new. Any help would be appreciated.


Image the drive to a series of CDs or DVDs, or to a secondary hard drive
that has enough room for an image, using an imaging program. Most of
these products will also clone the drive directly to a replacement hard
drive if you want to do it in one sitting.

Image for Windows, and Image for DOS:
http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/image-for-windows.htm

Acronis True Image Home:
http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing...age/index.html

R-Drive Image:
http://www.drive-image.com/

Easeus Disk Copy (free):
http://www.easeus.com/disk-copy/

--
Glen Ventura
MS MVP Oct. 2002 - Sept. 2009
CompTIA A+
http://dts-l.net/

Re: How to Mirror a Hard Drive?
 

dan kirk wrote:
> I have a Microsoft Windows XP system, and chkdsk found some bad sectors. I would like to mirror the
> whole drive, boot sector and all, before the drive fails completely.
>
> There's a lot of programming, and it would take days to reinstall all the programs and upgrade from
> the backup disks created when the computer was new. Any help would be appreciated.
>
> Dan Kirk
>
>

If the disk is really badly damaged, you can use the recipe here.
This would be a method of last resort, and works sector by sector,
saving as many good sectors as possible. It's because of the
complexity of doing this, that it's not your first choice.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/Damag....27ddrescue.27

If your disk only as a couple bad sectors, then try some of the
other suggestions instead. A file level recovery might be
good enough.

Paul

Re: How to Mirror a Hard Drive?
 

"dan kirk" <dan_at_foxkeep.org> wrote in message
news:4cfe3ea7$0$14827$bbae4d71@news.suddenlink.net ...

>I have a Microsoft Windows XP system, and chkdsk found some bad sectors. I
>would like to mirror the whole drive, boot sector and all, before the drive
>fails completely.
>
> There's a lot of programming, and it would take days to reinstall all the
> programs and upgrade from the backup disks created when the computer was
> new. Any help would be appreciated.

This is why most hard drive makers now include with new (large) hard drives
cloning software that replicates the old C: onto the new drive. You can
then swap the drives (or their configuration in BIOS), boot from the new
clone,
and then evaluate whether the old drive can be reformatted for some other
use e.g. backup. (But the cheapness of new drives with no bad sectors
prompts against this.)
--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)

Re: How to Mirror a Hard Drive?
 

glee;1263492 Wrote:
>
> Acronis True Image Home:
> http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing...age/index.html
> --
> Glen Ventura
> MS MVP Oct. 2002 - Sept. 2009
> CompTIA A+
> http://dts-l.net/

^^ That's the right answer.

--John A. Lillard