Transfering data from a failing 3tb hard drive to a 8tb hard drive without formatting the 8tb

[dangerproned]

What is the best way to transfer data from my 3tb hard drive that is failing to my 8tb without having to format the drive since I already have data on it

[Vector0102]

11 minutes ago, dangerproned said:

What is the best way to transfer data from my 3tb hard drive that is failing to my 8tb without having to format the drive since I already have data on it

I dont think you have to format it, if both the drives have the same filesystem. However, if you're copying a windows install, it's better to create a free partition in the 8tb drive and then move the install(if the 8tb drive has no windows install on it).

[SupaKomputa]

if your 8tb not a windows partition, boot with linux live cd and copy from there.

how do you know the drive is failing?

[dangerproned]

3 minutes ago, Vector0102 said:

I dont think you have to format it, if both the drives have the same filesystem. However, if you're copying a windows install, it's better to create a free partition in the 8tb drive and then move the install(if the 8tb drive has no windows install on it).

How should I transfer it? I am fearful a copy and paste of that size might just finsih the drive off as its already on its way out the door?

[Vector0102]

1 minute ago, dangerproned said:

How should I transfer it? I am fearful a copy and paste of that size might just finsih the drive off as its already on its way out the door?

If its really sensitive data, I recommend giving the drive to a data recovery company if the drive is in a bad condition. Or you can try moving really important stuff first, and then transfer other files.

[SupaKomputa]

16 minutes ago, dangerproned said:

How should I transfer it? I am fearful a copy and paste of that size might just finsih the drive off as its already on its way out the door?

explain what's the problem? how is it failing?

what drive is it? internal / external?

[dangerproned]

3 minutes ago, SupaKomputa said:

explain what's the problem? how is it failing?

what drive is it? internal / external?

Im very confidante it is the drive failing, its an internal drive and its pretty old, extremely slow transfers, brings the whole computer to a grinding halt when plugged in, missing files, and crashes.

[SupaKomputa]

3TB drives is not really that old, under 5 years i assume.

You should fix the errors before you can transfer the files securely.

Get a new SATA cable, make sure it's fitted properly.

Most of the slowness problem usually involves bad sectors, this can probably be repaired.

One apps that i can suggest is HD Sentinel, do a surface scan with repair mode turn on.

[Kilrah]

1 hour ago, dangerproned said:

How should I transfer it? I am fearful a copy and paste of that size might just finsih the drive off as its already on its way out the door?

Copy/paste or another method won't change much, if it's dying it's dying and you'll always risk it failing i the middle.

 

If you want to make a sector copy to avoid seeking then you can make a drive image, but you will now need space to hold the entirety of the drive twice (once for the image, once for getting the files out of it once copied). Might want to buy a new drive to direct copy the failing one to.

[vanished]

If the data is important to you, your best chance is to contact a professional.  Following any of this advice could result in failure and no one here is going to take responsibility if that happens.

 

With that out of the way, you've basically got two options: just copy and paste all the files normally, or take a full disk image.  I don't know how full the 8 TB drive is in this case, or the 3 TB drive either for that matter.  If you have the space to do a complete disk image, that might be the better way to go (emphasis on might).  I've heard that doing that can potentially put much less stress on the drive than doing a file level copy and paste since it will just read the entire thing as one contiguous piece rather than jumping all over the place to read all the little pieces.

[SupaKomputa]

15 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

Copy/paste or another method won't change much, if it's dying it's dying and you'll always risk it failing i the middle.

Sometimes that's not always the case, recently i had almost dead HDD, health only 54%, lost of bad sectors, copied everything, when i'm about to scrap it, i changed the sata cable, properly scan it, found error and auto repair. Full surface scan with repair, all bad sectors fixed, and now the health is 99%, no windows error reporting, no disk connection error, nothing. All fixed.

 

If you can scan the whole drive, it's probably fixable.

You wanna clone the whole drive while it's still has error, you might get into problems.

[dangerproned]

9 hours ago, SupaKomputa said:

Sometimes that's not always the case, recently i had almost dead HDD, health only 54%, lost of bad sectors, copied everything, when i'm about to scrap it, i changed the sata cable, properly scan it, found error and auto repair. Full surface scan with repair, all bad sectors fixed, and now the health is 99%, no windows error reporting, no disk connection error, nothing. All fixed.

 

If you can scan the whole drive, it's probably fixable.

You wanna clone the whole drive while it's still has error, you might get into problems.

What program did you use?

[dangerproned]

9 hours ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

If the data is important to you, your best chance is to contact a professional.  Following any of this advice could result in failure and no one here is going to take responsibility if that happens.

 

With that out of the way, you've basically got two options: just copy and paste all the files normally, or take a full disk image.  I don't know how full the 8 TB drive is in this case, or the 3 TB drive either for that matter.  If you have the space to do a complete disk image, that might be the better way to go (emphasis on might).  I've heard that doing that can potentially put much less stress on the drive than doing a file level copy and paste since it will just read the entire thing as one contiguous piece rather than jumping all over the place to read all the little pieces.

Is there a way to restore the image to my 8tb drive without having to wipe the data I have on it already?

[vanished]

57 minutes ago, dangerproned said:

Is there a way to restore the image to my 8tb drive without having to wipe the data I have on it already?

You should be able to mount the image and retrieve individual files from it.  How exactly that process looks depends again on how much data and free space we're dealing with.

[dangerproned]

54 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

You should be able to mount the image and retrieve individual files from it.  How exactly that process looks depends again on how much data and free space we're dealing with.

I have a little over 1Tb of data on my 3tb and on my 8tb I have over 6tb of free space so plenty. So I should make an image of the 3TB? What program should I used to make the image and then mount and retrieve files from, thank you so much for your help

[Kilrah]

ddrescue on linux is made just for that. It'll skip bad blocks quickly in order to avoid losing time and risking to cause more damage on the first pass, then come back to try them again harder after all the good ones are copied over and do multiple passes like this. 

Can be used either file-based or image-based.

[SupaKomputa]

3 hours ago, dangerproned said:

What program did you use?

I use HD Sentinel.

[dangerproned]

1 hour ago, Kilrah said:

ddrescue on linux is made just for that. It'll skip bad blocks quickly in order to avoid losing time and risking to cause more damage on the first pass, then come back to try them again harder after all the good ones are copied over and do multiple passes like this. 

Can be used either file-based or image-based.

Is there a specific linux distribution I should use to run ddrescue or does it not matter.

[Kilrah]

Doesn't matter.