datarecovery Help! I'm scared of losing all my data while copying a damaged drive

[Mimikyaa]

For some time i wanted to replace a drive in my laptop. I take up 200GBs of space on a 700GB disc so I bought a 256GB SSD. I thought I'll jus run Macrium Reflect cloning and it will go smoothly, but the process always stops at 37% even though the connection is secure and there is no antivirus enabled. I tried to check the sectors using EaseUS partition master and it showed 2 bad sectors. I cannot use EaseUS disk copy because I can't resize partitions in this program. I know i could run CHKDSK but im extremely scared it will damage the drive and destroy my windows copy and all the important files.

 

What do you think I should do?

 

I'm scared i can't do anything. If I don't run CHKDSK i will not be able to copy the disc files, but if I do there is a chance I'll lose everything.

 

Is there a solution I can't see? Maybe I could copy the contents of the drive onto the new one some other, safe way.

[Archer42]

8 minutes ago, Mimikyaa said:

What do you think I should do?

With bad sectors... well you have 2 options IMO.

1. Just boot into OS and copy files you need first. Reinstalling OS and stuff might be a pain, but actual unrecoverable info is always more valuable.

2. Use ddrescue. It is one of the best if not the best tool for the job.

 

Do not run checkdisk before the data is safe on other device. You are right to be scared, it might fix stuff or it might destroy it.

[Mimikyaa]

14 minutes ago, Archer42 said:

With bad sectors... well you have 2 options IMO.

1. Just boot into OS and copy files you need first. Reinstalling OS and stuff might be a pain, but actual unrecoverable info is always more valuable.

2. Use ddrescue. It is one of the best if not the best tool for the job.

 

Do not run checkdisk before the data is safe on other device. You are right to be scared, it might fix stuff or it might destroy it.

How do I even use ddrescue? what is it supposed to do? is it in any way dangerous?

[Archer42]

5 minutes ago, Mimikyaa said:

How do I even use ddrescue? what is it supposed to do? is it in any way dangerous?

It creates full image of hdd skipping bad blocks. It is relatively safe, does not write anything to disk at all, but working with damaged hdd can always damage it further, no way around it.

As for how to use - boot in some linux live cd, this should work. Have enough space to store the image somewhere. The tool is commandline, you can read the manual here.

[Mimikyaa]

Do you think it's a good idea to image the disc instead? How does this process deal with bad sectors?

[Archer42]

23 minutes ago, Mimikyaa said:

Do you think it's a good idea to image the disc instead? How does this process deal with bad sectors?

Imaging the disk is the first thing that should always be done in any "data recovery" situation. Because such image will provide exact copy of hdd regardless of filesystem state and such. You can write it to another hdd and work with it to recover data, if you mess it up you can always retry once more. Basically once the image is done you are safe in terms of not making things worse and can play around with stuff safely as much as you want.

 

It skips unreadable sectors. Might retry again later if you want to. But if they are completely unreadable nothing can be done about it anyway. It will result in corruption of those files which had data stored in this sectors but that's unavoidable anyway.

Filesystem should not be critically damaged. It has multiple copies of critical data, I've restored data from funny stuff like 500GB hdd with ~100GB unreadable which also was a part of fakeraid array. Using ddrescue, dmraid and testdisk. As long as actual data was stored in readable areas it, most likely, can be restored.

 

Also in many cases making image and working either with image or writing it to physically working hdd and working with it will be faster than working with damaged hdd, because that can be painfully slow, as you probably already noticed.

[Mimikyaa]

Maybe I could do it more easily? Let's say I'd just copy the system partition (it has no bad sectors) itself onto the new drive and take care of the important files excluding heavy programs with a simple pendrive? Could this work?

[Mimikyaa]

I just have to thank you so much, your help means a lot to me. The situation scared me a lot and ur support lifts me up

[Archer42]

2 minutes ago, Mimikyaa said:

Maybe I could do it more easily? Let's say I'd just copy the system partition (it has no bad sectors) itself onto the new drive and take care of the important files excluding heavy programs with a simple pendrive? Could this work?

It will probably work. It is just a good habit to always start with imaging because this is much safer way. If you are willing to take risks you can skip the step.

Also when reading files from damaged hdd once you bump into bad sectors you'll have to manually skip those files, otherwise it will take unrealistically long time. ddrescue does it for you by skipping bad sectors relatively fast.

I understand that you probably have no space to store the image, but may be it is a good moment to think about buying external hdd? Can use it for recovery now and for backups later. Because if ssd decides to die it generally dies completely with data becoming either completely unrecoverable or requiring so much effort to recover that it will cost thousands of dollars.

[Mimikyaa]

Just now, Archer42 said:

It will probably work. It is just a good habit to always start with imaging because this is much safer way. If you are willing to take risks you can skip the step.

Also when reading files from damaged hdd once you bump into bad sectors you'll have to manually skip those files, otherwise it will take unrealistically long time. ddrescue does it for you by skipping bad sectors relatively fast.

I understand that you probably have no space to store the image, but may be it is a good moment to think about buying external hdd? Can use it for recovery now and for backups later. Because if ssd decides to die it generally dies completely with data becoming either completely unrecoverable or requiring so much effort to recover that it will cost thousands of dollars.

How much GBs do u recon the image would take up? I guess the 32GB pendrive is surely too small for 200GB of data. Do u think I could create in image on the ssd I was aiming to use as a new disc, transfer it to my second laptop, delete it from the ssd and then be able to copy the windows onto it

Would I have to change format of the ssd to store an image to it? Also, would I be able to then use it as a new, internal disc

I could buy an external but it would take some time to ship it and also I don't have the money to buy a proper one right now. Also I think it'll be the only time I change the disc in a laptop

[Mimikyaa]

Another thought had struck me. If i don't care about the data on bad sectors, could I just make the image into the copy?

How even is the image used, can i somehow uncompress it into the new ssd and make it a copy?

[Mimikyaa]

update, I cannot make an image of the partition with bad sectors

[Gogeekgadgets]

If your hdd has many bad sectors near MBR, the centre part of hdd and trying to make an image is not possible because if you ignore bad sectors the OS may not get full data (copy) to ssd. 

[Mimikyaa]

I copied the system and recovery partition and then created a new NFSW format partition and currently I am copying files and programs onto it. Will this work? will my computer boot up?

[Archer42]

1 hour ago, Mimikyaa said:

I copied the system and recovery partition and then created a new NFSW format partition and currently I am copying files and programs onto it. Will this work? will my computer boot up?

It should. If you copied all small partitions with boot files and stuff and system partition it should work.

 

 

[Mimikyaa]

9 hours ago, Archer42 said:

It should. If you copied all small partitions with boot files and stuff and system partition it should work.

 

 

I've done everything but I'm just not able to boot properly, I'm stuck on the "attempting repair" while using the new disc. How can I help it? It would be incredible if I could at least get just the system onto the laptop, I'd borrow an external drive from a friend and copy-paste the rest od the data. Why is this error even popping up even though I've only copied the data onto the new drive