Preparing for disk failure

[Guest]

A while ago I discovered some bad sectors on my HDD. My (limited)
understanding of these things is that the disk may not fail for years, or it
may fail tomorrow - there's no way of knowing. To deal with this possibility,
I do a weekly backup of the data on my disk as follows. Data files are backed
up using the backup utility that comes with Maxtor's Shared Storage Plus.
System and program files (and system state) are backed up using the backup
utility that comes bundled with XP. I'm starting to get nervous about this
approach though. If the disk fails, will I be able to restore to a new disk
and have it run without incident? Is there any way to test this? If I have to
do a complete reinstall it could take forever. This would be a real pain
because I have tons of programs installed now that would have to be
reinstalled. Is a more viable option to regularly take some sort of image of
the disk? If so what tools are good for this?

 

[Shenan Stanley]

A while ago I discovered some bad sectors on my HDD. My (limited)
understanding of these things is that the disk may not fail for
years, or it may fail tomorrow - there's no way of knowing. To deal
with this possibility, I do a weekly backup of the data on my disk
as follows. Data files are backed up using the backup utility that
comes with Maxtor's Shared Storage Plus. System and program files
(and system state) are backed up using the backup utility that
comes bundled with XP. I'm starting to get nervous about this
approach though. If the disk fails, will I be able to restore to a
new disk and have it run without incident? Is there any way to test
this? If I have to do a complete reinstall it could take forever.
This would be a real pain because I have tons of programs installed
now that would have to be reinstalled. Is a more viable option to
regularly take some sort of image of the disk? If so what tools are
good for this?

Buy a new drive.

Use either the imaging application and instructions that come with the drive
or use a third party imaging application to image your current setup to the
new drive. Change the jumpers/cable setup so the new drive is primary/the
boot drive and remove the defunct drive.

Why be nervous and wait for the drive to die when you could just 'fix it'?

Symantec/Norton Ghost
http://snipurl.com/13e00

Acronis True Image
http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/

BootItT NG
http://terabyteunlimited.com/bootitng.html

 

[Guest]

Simple as that?!? Many thanks Shenan. Do most drives come with imaging
software?

 

[cquirke (MVP Windows shell/user)]

On Wed, 11 Apr 2007 20:04:00 -0700, GPO

A while ago I discovered some bad sectors on my HDD. My (limited)
understanding of these things is that the disk may not fail for years, or it
may fail tomorrow - there's no way of knowing.

Normally I'd evacuate the HD and replace it immediately. If the HD's
underc warranty - e.g. Seagate are covered for 5 years, most are
covered for 3 years - it's pretty much a no-brainer, but I'd do it
even if I had to buy a new (bigger) HD.

I'd then pension off the old HD as a backup device, perhaps within one
of those external USB housings.

Things to do:

1) Check whether PC or OS is OK > 137G

If OS is XP SP1, it should be upgraded to SP2 for safety.
If OS is pre-SP1 XP, it is NOT safe > 137G !
If PC BIOS sees > 137G as "137G", also NOT safe !
If unsafe > 137G, have to use 120G or smaller :-(

2) Evacuate HD

XP's too lame to survive a file-level copy from one HD to another, so
you are obliged to preserve the installation as a partition image.

I use BING from www.bootitng.com (without installing it to HD) to
image the partition from old to new HD. Then I create an extended
partition to fill the rest of the HD, and one or more logical volumes
within that; BING can format them, too.

Then I remove the old HD and boot the new one. If that works, I power
off and unplug, add the old HD as second HD, boot again, and copy over
all the files from old HD to one of the logical volumes on new one.

3) Check the HD using HD Tune

HD Tune from www.hdtune.com can show SMART details, temperature, and
do a full surface scan of the entire HD, irrespective of partitioning,
file systems, etc. After (1) and (2), do this to test and document
the state of the old HD before submitting it for warranty swap.

4) Monitor the HD's temperature

HD Tune tells you the temperature, and if that's > 40C, it would be a
good idea to add a front case fan and/or locate the HD in front of its
airflow. Too bad if it's a laptop... if temperature is > 50C, you can
expect the new HD to die an early death.

I use a SysTray utility to watch HD temperature all the time; it glows
red if > 42C. Note that old HDs may not include temperature in the
SMART feature set, and HDs isolated from S-ATA or IDE via (say) a USB
connection, won't pass temperature or other SMART info to the PC.

--------------- ----- ---- --- -- - - -

Who is General Failure and
why is he reading my disk?