Need help with failing Hard drive

[YeOldeStonecat]

Stepping back a bit here to see through the fog of the incorrect "getting data from a failed HDD" squabble....you do not want to "clone" the Windows 7 drive to a brand new computer.
*Windows license...likely an OEM license, so that lives and dies with the hardware it was sold in. Non-tranferrable
*Windows install has drives and utilities/OEM software for the workstation it was installed on. If you move it to all new hardware, you'll have it booting up all in broken video safe mode looking mode. You'll have to go on a driver hunt....and go download/install drivers for the "new computer"..(If it supports Windows 7)....it may not..might be a newer computer that has drivers for Win10 only. And then you should properly remove the old drivers for the old hardware. And OEM utilities. End result is still a messy/sloppy Windows install...that often runs quirky. Perhaps locks up once a week or once a month, or fails to shut down properly or go into sleep mode. Or crashes to desktop once in a while if gaming with heavy graphic games.

For transferring files....I just do it manually (still the quickest way for me)....I just find out what needs to be moved .documents/desktop/favorites/pics/music/downloads are easy. EMail..depends on email client, still just an easy copy. Quicken or Quickbooks...easy. Whatever else...still likely just an easy copy.. Copy to a USB drive or just across network...and setup on new computer.

 

[lcoughey]

Ive had great success with failing/failed drives by running "Spinrite" at level 4. I always run Spinrite at level 2 when the customer starts to complain about "weird" things happening on their computer, just in case. As soon as Spinrite is finished I clone the drive and also backup their document folders just in case.

Did you ever read the SpinRite manual? I assume not, as the first thing it tells you to do is backup the data first. I'm not interested in getting into another snake oil debate. You can read my opinion on the topic if you just search this forum. Here is a link to a blog I wrote about it a while back, too. http://www.recoveryforce.com/spinrite-a-data-recovery-program/

It may be worth watching the DeepSpar video on read ignoring ECC, as well.

 

[Rosco]

I highly recommend Parted Magic for everyone, but on my (admittedly slightly out of date) version the "easy" way to run ddrescue is through a GUI which quite frankly seemed to have a variety of poor choices and no way to set some options I was reading about elsewhere. It's what I ended up using to image the only drive I've needed to do any recovery on recently, but I ended up needing to run it from the command line.

I tried the gui but didnt really like it. I am back to the command line.

 

[Rosco]

Stepping back a bit here to see through the fog of the incorrect "getting data from a failed HDD" squabble....you do not want to "clone" the Windows 7 drive to a brand new computer.
*Windows license...likely an OEM license, so that lives and dies with the hardware it was sold in. Non-tranferrable
*Windows install has drives and utilities/OEM software for the workstation it was installed on. If you move it to all new hardware, you'll have it booting up all in broken video safe mode looking mode. You'll have to go on a driver hunt....and go download/install drivers for the "new computer"..(If it supports Windows 7)....it may not..might be a newer computer that has drivers for Win10 only. And then you should properly remove the old drivers for the old hardware. And OEM utilities. End result is still a messy/sloppy Windows install...that often runs quirky. Perhaps locks up once a week or once a month, or fails to shut down properly or go into sleep mode. Or crashes to desktop once in a while if gaming with heavy graphic games.

For transferring files....I just do it manually (still the quickest way for me)....I just find out what needs to be moved .documents/desktop/favorites/pics/music/downloads are easy. EMail..depends on email client, still just an easy copy. Quicken or Quickbooks...easy. Whatever else...still likely just an easy copy.. Copy to a USB drive or just across network...and setup on new computer.

What if you run the oob program to reset all the drivers? Would that make it more stable?

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

With each newer version of Windows...it has become easier to do. Or shall I say...Windows has become more tolerant of that. But unless there is no other way around it...(like some old manufacturing machine control software that is no longer available)...do you want to take the chance of a computer being unreliable? IMO there is still junk left over. I'm very familiar with the steps in pulling old drivers out, and long debates can be made about moving to similar hardware, or not similar hardware, or totally different hardware, the HAL, HDD controller drivers being replaced, and all that stuff. But to me, Windows is so easy and quick to install fresh...why risk a potentially "not 100% solid computer"...just to skimp on doing the job right..and taking the pizza tech hack lazy approach.

...Windows licensing aside.

 

[lcoughey]

I'm with @YeOldeStonecat, it is better to do a fresh install on new hardware and migrate data over. A fresh clean install should be faster and more stable.

 

[DataMedics]

Steve can giggle as much as he likes. Spinrite is still snake oil.

I'm selling some magnetic bracelets, and thought you may be interested. They improve blood flow, relieve pain, and help cure cancer.

Actually I have to disagree. Snake oil is benign, doesn't help anything but doesn't hurt either. Spinrite is actually harmful.

 

[cyde_ePhex]

Spinrite is basically snake oil.

I wouldn't dream of using it on ANY machine ever.

The damage it can, and does cause is beyond belief!

Which is why in the past I used Spinrite on brand new hard drives. I figured if I was to get a bad drive out of the box, Spinrite would let me know. Not sure if it was coincidence or not, but I ended up with a few new, out of the box drives die while running it. Haven't done this in about 2 years though, can't remember why I stopped.