Is cloning a HDD safe?

[TheNaitsyrk]

Hi,

 

One of my HDDs is basically transfering files at a very slow rate and I want to RMA it, but I want to get the data off of it first by cloning it with a brand-new I bought. One is 2015 and the other is 2017 model of Seagate Barracuta 2TB. Is it safe to do? 

 

Also, will my games work if I clone the drive and make the same name etc?

[Crunchy Dragon]

Cloning is safe, as long as all the data gets across fully intact I don't see any reason your games and everything wouldn't work.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Use ddrescue. Its much better at getting every bit of a failing drive.

 

Id clone it into a file of a bigger drive.

[TheNaitsyrk]

Just now, Electronics Wizardy said:

Use ddrescue. Its much better at getting every bit of a failing drive.

 

Id clone it into a file of a bigger drive.

Both drives same capacity. I'm planning to use Seagate tool to do so.

[manikyath]

we have a cloning box at work for this stuff, it works great, but ever since i put together a box with clonezilla on it, we've just been using clonezilla instead, because its so much more intelligent.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, TheNaitsyrk said:

Both drives same capacity. I'm planning to use Seagate tool to do so.

ddrescue is much better at this. Its made to get failing sectore, most other cloning programs will fail when they reach a bad sector.

[TheNaitsyrk]

Just now, Electronics Wizardy said:

ddrescue is much better at this. Its made to get failing sectore, most other cloning programs will fail when they reach a bad sector.

Drive is not failing, I never said it is. It's just slow.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, TheNaitsyrk said:

Drive is not failing, I never said it is. It's just slow.

check the smart data. You can't rma a slow drive normally.

[TheNaitsyrk]

Just now, Electronics Wizardy said:

check the smart data. You can't rma a slow drive normally.

I already did, and I can because Seagate literally wrote to me on this forum to RMA it.

[TheNaitsyrk]

1 minute ago, CUDA_Cores said:

Yes, cloning is safe. In fact if the HDD is failing, it may be one of your last chances to recover your data. 

 

Also try plugging the HDD into a different SATA port on your motherboard. Sometimes motherboard manufacturers add third party marvell chipsets to their boards that actually perform worse than the onboard SATA ports provided by your chipset. So much so that your HDD slows to a crawl. 

I never said it's failing.... Oh my God....

 

However, I will plug it into different slot, and test it. Thanks.

[TheNaitsyrk]

1 minute ago, CUDA_Cores said:

An HDD operating very slowly is a classic symptom of failure. Even if you don't think that HDD is failing, pretend it is.Because it could stop working at any moment. 

All sectors clean, passes all tests. Even 4h advanced one. I'm pretty sure it's fine. Idk what is wrong btw.

My 2014 drive is faster than this one, even though this one is 1 year younger and is less crowded. 

[TheNaitsyrk]

3 minutes ago, CUDA_Cores said:

The data doesn't matter. I've seen plenty of HDDs and SSDs where they passed all their SMART tests with flying colors, yet the drives simply failed out of nowhere in the next few days. 

 

I used to have a job where I would test dozens of hard drives a day and whether they could be wiped and resold. I've seen this countless times. 

Well, when I formatted it, it was working fine hence why I wanted to return the drive to Amazon since I didn't need it any more. After I installed everything I needed on the HDD, the HDD worked fine with fine speeds. A week later I decided to test again and read dropped from 170mb/s to 45mb/s and write dropped from 175mb/s to 120mb/s.

 

I'm glad I didn't return that new HDD.

[emosun]

25 minutes ago, TheNaitsyrk said:

Is it safe to do? 

depends how many lions are in the room at the time.

[Enderman]

Don't clone. Windows often gets screwed up after a clone.

Sometimes it won't even boot, other times you find out months later when a windows update gets corrupted and fails.

Do a clean install the proper way to avoid issues in the future.

https://www.howtogeek.com/224342/how-to-clean-install-windows-10/

You will save yourself time and headaches.

[emosun]

11 minutes ago, CUDA_Cores said:

I've seen plenty of HDDs and SSDs where they passed all their SMART tests with flying colors, yet the drives simply failed out of nowhere in the next few days. 

and to the contrary , i have a 1tb drive in a different machine that always fails the smart test but has been like that for years on end. lol

[Guest The Viking]

cloning is safe, yeah. Just make sure to assign the same letter to your new drive after cloning it, otherwise some software could have issues running.

 

I use Macrium Reflect.

[TheNaitsyrk]

2 minutes ago, Enderman said:

Don't clone. Windows often gets screwed up after a clone.

Sometimes it won't even boot, other times you find out months later when a windows update gets corrupted and fails.

Do a clean install the proper way to avoid issues in the future.

https://www.howtogeek.com/224342/how-to-clean-install-windows-10/

You will save yourself time and headaches.

I don't have Windows on it.

 

With 3 SSDs why would I run Windows on HDD lmao.

[Enderman]

3 minutes ago, TheNaitsyrk said:

I don't have Windows on it.

 

With 3 SSDs why would I run Windows on HDD lmao.

Oh so it's just data?

Then yeah cloning should work ok.

You might need to tell steam/other launchers which disk to look for your games in again.

[TheNaitsyrk]

1 hour ago, Enderman said:

Oh so it's just data?

Then yeah cloning should work ok.

You might need to tell steam/other launchers which disk to look for your games in again.

Cloned with Seagate's DiscWizard and it works! All game works and speeds are as they should be 197/192 in CrystalDiskMark. Thanks.

[manikyath]

14 hours ago, TheNaitsyrk said:

All sectors clean, passes all tests. Even 4h advanced one. I'm pretty sure it's fine. Idk what is wrong btw.

My 2014 drive is faster than this one, even though this one is 1 year younger and is less crowded. 

i've had this disk pass all smart tests a week before this happened:

 

reason i did the test a week before was because it felt a bit sluggish...

SMART cant say your drive is all good, it can only give warnings when things are so far out of bounds that something must be up. SMART is the measurement tool, your brain is the monitoring system.

often read/write/seek error rates can be an early indication, especially if they rise suddenly, or give readings as extreme as in this screenshot. at that time the disk was reading at around 4kbps..

 

needless to say after a very painful 48 hour recovery job this one was RMA'd

[TheNaitsyrk]

1 hour ago, manikyath said:

i've had this disk pass all smart tests a week before this happened:

 

reason i did the test a week before was because it felt a bit sluggish...

SMART cant say your drive is all good, it can only give warnings when things are so far out of bounds that something must be up. SMART is the measurement tool, your brain is the monitoring system.

often read/write/seek error rates can be an early indication, especially if they rise suddenly, or give readings as extreme as in this screenshot. at that time the disk was reading at around 4kbps..

 

needless to say after a very painful 48 hour recovery job this one was RMA'd

Glad I replaced it with a brand-new one.