[Hinsler]

Hello. My Windows XP Home laptop hard drive clicks sometimes. So I thought I would clone it and install a new one before it crashes for good, though everything works well and I get no software errors.....at the moment. When I try to clone to a USB drive, I get an bad sector error about 4% into the process. Retry brings me back to the same spot, Ignore brings me back to the same spot, and Ignore ALL just locks up the computer. When I run chkdsk I also locks up at 4% tast completed. I would be happy to copy the bad setors to a new hard drive just to make sure that I get the data transferred. I have backed up my data, but I would really not like to have to reinstall EVERYTHING!!

Any software that will clone and barge right through bad sectors? Or any way to fix these sectors and disguise them to the cloning software?

Thanks.

H

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Even if you clone and ignore bad sectors, there's no guarantee that the data on those sectors will be readable. While you can "patch" bad sectors as such, you're just effectively blowing up a car tyre with a puncture in it that ultimately needs replacing and ignoring the major issue that it's got a fault.
You'll do better to replace the drive, put a new copy of Windows on it and then worry about getting off what data you can.

[Neil Jones]

Even if you clone and ignore bad sectors, there's no guarantee that the data on those sectors will be readable. While you can "patch" bad sectors as such, you're just effectively blowing up a car tyre with a puncture in it that ultimately needs replacing and ignoring the major issue that it's got a fault.
You'll do better to replace the drive, put a new copy of Windows on it and then worry about getting off what data you can.