Macrium Let Me down

[OldGuy]

My Win XP Pro laptop has HDD problems.
I have run chkdisk (no options) several times until it showed no error.

So I booted off the Macrium Reflect Free DVD I created to create and
image.
It has Win PE 3.1.

MRF DVD rescue searched for and found all the needed drivers on the
laptop and even allowed me to use a USB2 2T HDD as the image
destination.

But unfortunately after 6 hours of creating the image MRF says it had a
disk read problem and quit. I thought doing a image skipped bad
sectors. I went to Macrium's Forum and found the error code but the
answer was no answer. i.e. no solution.

So just for giggles I ran check disk using the /r /f options and it
hung in phase 4 of 5 at 15% complete and sat there for six hours.

I powered off and on and booted no problem.

So I am lost at getting this OS to a new HDD.

I am right now running on the laptop. It boots. So far the
applications are working. I am posting from this laptop.

 

[philo]

My Win XP Pro laptop has HDD problems.
I have run chkdisk (no options) several times until it showed no error.

If you used no options then NO repair would have been performed.

So I booted off the Macrium Reflect Free DVD I created to create and image.
It has Win PE 3.1.

MRF DVD rescue searched for and found all the needed drivers on the
laptop and even allowed me to use a USB2 2T HDD as the image destination.

But unfortunately after 6 hours of creating the image MRF says it had a
disk read problem and quit. I thought doing a image skipped bad
sectors. I went to Macrium's Forum and found the error code but the
answer was no answer. i.e. no solution.

So just for giggles I ran check disk using the /r /f options and it hung
in phase 4 of 5 at 15% complete and sat there for six hours.

I powered off and on and booted no problem.

So I am lost at getting this OS to a new HDD.

I am right now running on the laptop. It boots. So far the
applications are working. I am posting from this laptop.

First off, back up all your data as there is a good chance you will not
be able to clone the drive because it's defective.


Once you do that you can get a Hiren's boot cd and use test disk
to see if it can write the data off the bad sectors.
If it can do so , you might then be able to clone your drive.


At any rate, the problem is not with Marcium, it's due to a defective HD


I repeat: Back up your data first

 

[Paul]

My Win XP Pro laptop has HDD problems.
I have run chkdisk (no options) several times until it showed no error.

So I booted off the Macrium Reflect Free DVD I created to create and image.
It has Win PE 3.1.

MRF DVD rescue searched for and found all the needed drivers on the
laptop and even allowed me to use a USB2 2T HDD as the image destination.

But unfortunately after 6 hours of creating the image MRF says it had a
disk read problem and quit. I thought doing a image skipped bad
sectors. I went to Macrium's Forum and found the error code but the
answer was no answer. i.e. no solution.

So just for giggles I ran check disk using the /r /f options and it hung
in phase 4 of 5 at 15% complete and sat there for six hours.

I powered off and on and booted no problem.

So I am lost at getting this OS to a new HDD.

I am right now running on the laptop. It boots. So far the
applications are working. I am posting from this laptop.

Simple. And your last option.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/Damaged_Hard_Disk

"The best method: Antonio Diaz's GNU 'ddrescue'"

The problem, is finding an environment to run it.

The tool is available for Windows, as a Cygwin installation.
But you cannot safely image a running Window C: that way.
What it would require, is finding a desktop Windows computer,
plugging the hard drive into the desktop computer, and using
the Windows on the desktop computer to run the Cygwin
version of ddrescue.

You can also boot a Linux LiveCD, and run the linux version
of ddrescue from there. Again, the reason that works, is the
hard drive is quiescent and no Windows files will be busy.
The thing can be safely copied, sector by sector. Only
the sectors which cause a hard drive error, will be ignored
and not copied. Doing CHKDSK over top of that area later,
on the new drive, may result in some data lost. (The
missing sector damages the file right away. If the missing
sector was part of the Master File Table, a bunch of
files could go missing.)

ddrescue is a two (or more) pass copy tool. It tries
to copy the easy to get sectors first.

ddrescue -n /dev/old_disk /dev/new_disk rescued.log

Using the log, on a subsequent attempt, it tries to
read the harder-to-get sectors. A disk drive can take
as long as 15 seconds, to decide a sector is not readable.

ddrescue -r 1 /dev/old_disk /dev/new_disk rescued.log

That would be the tool I'd try.

*******

If I thought there was a commercial tool that embodied the
approach, I'd suggest it to you. I saw one comment that
some version of Acronis TIH does that. But the trick there,
is finding the proof in their user manual.

This text is copied from the Western Digital
"AcronisTrueImageWDEditionUM.pdf" manual.

"8.2.1.3 Error handling Ignore bad sectors

The preset is disabled. This option lets you run a backup
even if there are bad sectors on the hard disk. Although
most disks do not have bad sectors, the possibility that
they might occur increases during the course of the hard
disk's lifetime. If your hard drive has started making
strange noises (for example, it starts making quite loud
clicking or grinding noises during operation), such noises
may mean that the hard drive is failing. When the hard drive
completely fails, you can lose important data, so it is
necessary to back up the drive as soon as possible. There
may be a problem though – the failing hard drive might
already have bad sectors. If the Ignore bad sectors box
is left unselected, a backup task is aborted in case of
read and/or write errors that could occur on the bad sectors.
Selecting this box lets you run a backup even if there are
bad sectors on the hard disk ensuring that you save as much
information from the hard drive as possible."

From elsewhere in the manual:

"8.1.1 Selecting what data to back up

When the Backup Wizard screen appears, select what data to back up.
...

To make a sector-by-sector backup, select the 'Back up
sector-by-sector (requires more storage space)' box. Please note
that this mode increases processing time and usually results
in a larger image file because it copies both used and unused
hard disk sectors. In addition, when configuring a sector-by-sector
backup of a complete hard disk you can include in the backup
unallocated space on the hard disk by selecting Back up
unallocated space. Thus you will include in the backup
all physical sectors on the hard drive."

The manual also addresses cloning. Really, it's a matter
of using whatever mode that supports the "Ignore bad sectors"
option.

What section 8.1.1 would do is

Old_drive ---> .tib file on external ---> restore to New_drive

That adds an extra step.

If you select Clone, that would do it like this. But Clone
doesn't seem to have the "ignore bad sectors" tick box.

Old_drive ---> New_drive on external, then install inside laptop

Install the software, and see what options it offers. And be prepared
to provide an additional disk drive, to complete this recovery.

*******

I'm giving you as many options as I can, so you have
some choices. Make sure you have enough spare disk drives
to successfully complete this operation.

*******

What Acronis promises to do, is step over bad sectors, when
the controller returns a read error. The ddrescue approach,
actually allows you to go back a second time, and "try harder"
to fill in the gaps. The rescued.log file allows the human operator,
to judge the extent to which the drive is damaged. Personally,
I would use the ddrescue method, as I feel I'm getting a better
picture of what is going on. The advantage of the Acronis
approach, is less to learn about Linux, even if it means
you don't get to copy exactly as many sectors.

There is also a refinement I would do. Before running ddrescue,
I would zero the target drive first. The idea being, to make
sure that any "undefined" sectors have a recognizable pattern.

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/new_disk

That's an example of using the pseudo data source "zero", to
write sectors filled with zeros over the new disk. Any sector
not written by ddrescue (because it can't read the source drive),
gets covered by the zeros. That prevents any data which was
previously on the recovery disk, from affecting the result
in a random way.

Acronis TIH free version is available from both Seagate and
from Western Digital. It requires that a Seagate or Western Digital
drive be in usage when making the copy.

http://www.techmixer.com/free-acronis-true-image-software-hard-disk/

http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers...k-with-acronis-true-image-wd-edition-software

Example of a download page.

http://support.wd.com/product/download.asp?groupid=613&lang=en

User manual.

http://support.wd.com/download/notes/atiwduserguide/ATIH2013WD_userguide_en-US.pdf

Use whatever option, you think you can get working.

HTH,
Paul

 

[BillW50]

The tool is available for Windows, as a Cygwin installation.
But you cannot safely image a running Window C: that way.

Hi Paul, you do know there are ways to actually clone a live Windows
system? Microsoft calls their method as Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy
Service (VSS). Paragon calls theirs as HotBackup.

I don't know exactly how either one of them works in detail, but I can
envision an easy way to pull this off. Much like how Windows Embedded
works, treat the drive as a read only device while the cloning is in
process. Thus none of the files are changing at all. Since the disk
image isn't changing, you can treat it as not running. Even freely clone
it if you would like.

One might ask, how could Windows run at all, if it can't make any
changes? Oh but Windows is making changes, but not to the drive image,
but somewhere else. Windows Embedded you have two choices, either cache
all writes and keep them in RAM, or spooling it off to another drive.

Thus Windows and the user sees changes taking place on the running OS,
so everything works perfectly, but no writes are actually taking place.
Now Windows Embedded allows one to either dump all of the cache writes
to the system drive at the time of your choosing, or later dump all
writes altogether (like restoring from an image back to an earlier time).

Windows isn't the only OS that can do this. My Xandros EeePC (Linux
based) does this too. As the stock image never changes. All writes takes
place in another partition. Thus if the OS ever fails to boot, it dumps
all writes and instantly restores the machine back to the original
factory state. Unfortunately, it isn't a user opinion. So when the OS
decides to do so, it just does it then without warning.

 

[Paul]

Hi Paul, you do know there are ways to actually clone a live Windows
system? Microsoft calls their method as Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy
Service (VSS). Paragon calls theirs as HotBackup.

I don't know exactly how either one of them works in detail, but I can
envision an easy way to pull this off. Much like how Windows Embedded
works, treat the drive as a read only device while the cloning is in
process. Thus none of the files are changing at all. Since the disk
image isn't changing, you can treat it as not running. Even freely clone
it if you would like.

One might ask, how could Windows run at all, if it can't make any
changes? Oh but Windows is making changes, but not to the drive image,
but somewhere else. Windows Embedded you have two choices, either cache
all writes and keep them in RAM, or spooling it off to another drive.

Thus Windows and the user sees changes taking place on the running OS,
so everything works perfectly, but no writes are actually taking place.
Now Windows Embedded allows one to either dump all of the cache writes
to the system drive at the time of your choosing, or later dump all
writes altogether (like restoring from an image back to an earlier time).

Windows isn't the only OS that can do this. My Xandros EeePC (Linux
based) does this too. As the stock image never changes. All writes takes
place in another partition. Thus if the OS ever fails to boot, it dumps
all writes and instantly restores the machine back to the original
factory state. Unfortunately, it isn't a user opinion. So when the OS
decides to do so, it just does it then without warning.

The disk dump program (dd or ddrescue), does not know how
to interact with VSS to make the disk quiescent. Disk dump works
the way a lot of older backup software works, where C: presented
a problem.

Also, tools that use VSS, then tend to parse the file system,
run CHKDSK and see if the file system is healthy and so on.
And those are operations that are going to fail for the OP,
since he has hardware trouble. And that means generally shying
away from VSS, and going for a lower level recovery strategy
(sector by sector, with retry). It would not be impossible
to do it with VSS, merely not something typically implemented.

When a disk has hardware trouble, it's not time for niceties.
Right now, it's a matter of finding something, anything,
which can successfully complete an attempt at a backup copy.
And get as many of the sectors as possible, without
erroring out. It's a race against time, since you never
know when the disk will stop responding. I've already
made the mistake once, of quitting for the night,
only to find a dead, non-responsive disk the next day.
You just work on it, until you get that backup copy.
Even if you're tired and cranky. Then you can sleep.

Paul