HDD errors - What to do?

Here is a machine, the hard drive is experiencing 'its last hours'. Still boot and run the system (32bit Vista) but the event log is full with 'disk error' entries, also the 'blue screen of death' on the rise. A full backup is no longer possible (failed), yet would be very important, because a lot of 'irreplaceable' drivers and other programs. Luckily I managed to save a lot of things, but before the hard drive replacement maybe I try even the HDD regenerator:
http://hdd-regenerator.software.informer.com/
or
http://www.dposoft.net/hdd.html
Has anyone used this? What is your experience? Other advices?
Thanks
zuisti

I used Hdd regenerator. sometimes it can solve your problem but not always. if your hdd damages physically, you should replace it even if you can
restore it.

I've tried a lot of software solutions. Despite the claims some make, by the time you resort to using such a tool, their primary utility is just to make it easier to read and backup any data that remains fully intact, on a drive that contains enough errors that it would be difficult to do so otherwise. Although that can be useful, expect little else.

In some cases, all or most of the data may be intact on the platters. And the real issue is that some electronic or mechanical aspect of the drive has drifted just far enough from normal function that it can no longer reliably read.

When that applies, I've had some surprising successes by putting the drive in the freezer for 20 minutes. I suppose it must alter some tolerance enough to temporarily allow normal function. As it heats up it will stop working again, so work fast and count on many freeze/copy cycles to get all the data recovered. Surrounding the drive with cold packs when in use extends the usable time, but only a little in my experience. Avoid booting from the drive if possible, this causes writes which may corrupt data.

You might also try testing the drive in another computer. The last "failing" drive I recovered was an interesting case, as it turned out to be in perfect health. A capacitor on the video card had failed instead, causing fluctuations on a power supply line sufficient to interfere with this particular drive. Neither the video card nor other drives in the system were noticeably affected. Replacing the capacitor solved the problem, and no data was lost.

Thanks for the valued advices.

BTW, the HDD in question is a SAMSUNG HD753LJ (750GB, SATA3, 7200rpm). Be about 4 years old, but it is very quiet, no any abnormal noise, not too warm. Once the PC stands up (very slow booting), it works normally, but indicates that some system files could not be reached (eg the FontCache-S-1-5-21*. dat). But occasionally (once or twice a week) here is the "blue screen of death." Then reset and it works again.

As I wrote, I want to do a full backup, and then immediately I will swap the HDD.

The fact that you get bsods suggests your problem may not be the hard drive - the drive errors may be a symptom not a cause.
Normally hard drives are very resiliant. In 35 years of computing I've only seen 5 crashes. All of those were on large "washing machine" style
cartrige drives and I only saw them because it was my job to fix them.
I have had 1 drive failure myself and that turned out to be electronic. I have some here 20 years old that work fine.
I have some floppy discs that are even older that are fine. On the other hand CD's are rubbish.
The trouble is it IS easy to damage one if it is miss-handled - so people panic and blame the drive instantly. Thats my impression anyway.

What I would do if I were you is to first try to do a full surface clone. You say that failed - before panicking I would recomend you
try it with "partedMagic" - this is a linux based utility package that contains a number of useful disc tools including disc and partition cloning and various
formatting and testing options. You can install it to boot off a USB stick.(I'd advise having that permanently anyway - I find it usefull quite a bit)
Dont worry about it being linux - its VERY easy to use and very flexible in what it can backup.

Then I'd find a way to fully format and test the drive itself
Run a full low level format if you can find out how to do that on your drive. (Remember microsoft format does not actually format the drive)
then partition - do a ntfs (or whatever you use) format then use parted magic to put the data back.

If the drive fails or keeps generating lots of bad clusters during this process you have no choice but to replace it.
I advise in your case that you try to do this in another machine as you may have PSU or other issues and that will
avoid them interfering in this process - and save you problems later if that is the case.

If it is a psu fault for example - you may get errors because the drive is what draws current and that tends to show problems first.

I'd say this is your best way to try and keep that particular drive in operation and save the most data.
There is a very slow but powerful utility with partedmagic that can recover pretty much anything thats still possible.
(I think its just called drive test for some reason)
Be very wary of random software on the net that doesnt have a large vocal following over time.

I hope that helps.

Hi 123jack;

Oh, the good old days ... I also have a 10 MB HDD (MFM, Seagate ST-412) which is about 30 years old, as the last time (last year) I tried, even perfectly functioned. In addition, here are my 360 K floppy disks, which still easy to read ( I have a drive too).

It seems to me that the reliability lost somewhere over the years, today's high capacity, compact HDDs are much more "sensitive" ...

But to return to my issue:

Thanks for the advice, now I downloaded the latest version of the partedmagic, to study it. I will try the full backup, but have my doubts: What it will do with the unreadable system files? Or the linux is more skilful at this as well? Don't think ... Another problem is that as I read "You must use (for cloning) a drive that is larger than the source drive!"

The PC has two HDDs (four particions):

Disk 0 (this is the culprit!):
- C: 292 GB, 226 GB free (system drive, used only 66 GB but no any full backup!)
- E: 405 GB, 387 GB free (only 18 GB used here, already saved)

Disk 1 (same type but perfect):
- D: 292 GB, 86 GB free
- F: 405 GB, 339 GB free

It would be good the current (almost empty) F: partition to use for store the C: backup.

What did you think about that first I try the HDD Regenerator, and then (if successful) the Vista's own backup program. If you do go, then it is time to try the partedmagic's cloning, always must have an another (new, empty) HDD.

Thanks
zuisti

You've probably noticed by now that partedmagic lets you back up either the whole drive or just individual partitions.
I have used both options for about 4 years now and have found the default selections work fine in both cases.
It might be worth just running parted magics "parted" partition editor on the drive and selecting it's "drive fix" setting.
I normally set it to verify the back when its done as it doesnt take long.

If that doesnt work you could try the file repair utility I mentionned - its in the boot up menu for parted magic - select the "extra features"
option to find it.

Just be careful not to let anything write to the disk itself (anywhere) until you give upt trying or have recovered the files.
Personally I'd never use any microsoft utilities for anything - they are the worlds worst software company.

Parted magic can zip the backups on the fly by the way - an empty vista 32 drive will come down to about 16Gb if I remember rightly.
(I can check that if you need me to - I dont have my backup drive handy right now)
That would then be all you need for that in the destination drive.

zuisti,

I´m aware that probably this subject bellow is not fully related to the question you started, but pehaps this approach can minimise effect of bad sectors at the working system. Take a look :

https://www.edaboard.com/threads/283227/


+++

123jack said:

Parted magic can zip the backups on the fly by the way - an empty vista 32 drive will come down to about 16Gb if I remember rightly.
That would then be all you need for that in the destination drive.

Click to expand...

I fired up my backup drive - it turns out that an empty vista32 installation compresses down to between 4 and 5GB ... smaller than I thought.
Just thought I'd mention it.