I surrender ...

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As many of you know, i have a weirded out HD. The thing is really annoying me, iv been trying for 3wks to get it functioning as it should again. I got quite far and realise now that the drive it has a bad sector.

The event viewer is showing event id 7 (bad block or something).

I have backed up my data using acronis image. This has given me an image of my C: and its applications etc etc. So no worries there.

I am as we speak running chkdsk /r to see if that will fix the bad sector for me..though im not counting on it. Check 1 of 5 said "file record segment 181456 is unreadable" EDIT: Chkdsk /r came back and told me the volume was clean...useless piece of disk checking crap.

Whilst backing up there was also some read errors that acronis could not...well....read.

The bottom line is that my PC is actually running OK. Its just i am AWARE something is not right because of the event viewer!
I intend to rip out the cruddy HD and as i have a second one in there, will restore my backup onto the 2nd HD..

My real question though, is will it be possible to use the backup image i have created from the faulty drive onto the new drive? Just simply "restore" the image onto the new drive? The backup contains system files/OS/Applications ...everything.Any help will be warmly received.

 

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If the imaging process completed sucessfully, then I don't see any reason why you couldn't just restore that image to a new disk. It's a pretty common thing to do (not necessarily for disaster recovery, but for prepping new systems).

It may be worth trying to download a diagnostic util for the particular type of drive you have. They can often give you a better idea of exactly what's wrong with it. Some will even give you an error code you can then use to start the RMA process. If it's less than 3 years old there is a good chance it's still under warranty. Worth sending back if it is, some companies will send you back a bigger drive as a sorry.

 

Hi, thanks for your post and advice.

My hard drive is: serial: wd1600aajs.
I have downloaded the DLT for this drive and am installing it as we speak. It has detected that support for larger drives was not fully enabled and has corrected this i think.

I think ill call the guys that made my pc and ask them if they will replace? If not illm just use my secondary one to install the faulty ones to.

I think i downloaded the wrong app. I downloaded the Data lifeguard toolkit....but this doesnt look like it can help me

 

In an ideal world then 'yes', restoring the image to a new disk should work ok.

The problem you may have is that as you have taken a disk image after the problem has occurred, and as such you may have an image that contains corrupt files or incomplete data due to the faulty hard drive. When you restore the image, any files that were copied as corrupt or incomplete will still be in the same state and may not be readable.

If these files happen to be related to the operating system or registry then this will probably cause some issues later on, and you may end up having to restore the o/s anyway.

 

in re to the non readable files and the corruption you mention,
1. I think the fault is with the HD itself and not corrupted files...though im probably wrong as it did mention a bad block/sector.
2. The backup usually informs if it cannot read some files and gives me the option to ignore the files or retry..i normally click retry, but am thinking i should be click ignore so it doesnt copy corrupt files.

 

ITHurts, I probably do this at least 10 - 15 times per month and it works perfectly every time. Acronis True Image is the best $150 I've ever spent. I wish the other products I owned worked this well.

 

If your drive is formatted in NTFS, bad blocks are marked by the file system and not used so the data will likely be ok. One thing with Acronis, validate your backups! (I learnt the hard way...)

 

thanks for the HU, am validating as we speak.....type.

 

Ok well validation came back ok. Will probably go ahead with the installation of the new drive when my other one starts playing up again. I just dont see the need to swap them just yet, as my PC runs fine in theory.

As soon as i do like a scan disk or anything though, the event viewer starts giving me logs of id 7 (bad block)...could this be down to poor cabling?ie; badly installed HD as in the way i have arranged them phyisically in the pc?

In any case, i assume the HDD is on its way out?

 

It could be a dodgy SATA/IDE cable. My preference is to replace any drives that have any signs of problems. I don’t trust 'em once they start going wrong, and don’t want to keep valuable data on them anymore.