![]() Step 1: Setting up a Linux Live CD, DVD, or USB Not to be confused with dd or dd_rescue which are similar programs but not quite as good for this task.įor the purpose of this tutorial, we'll be using a Knoppix Live edition of Linux due to its ease of use, however many other builds of Linux can be used as well. Even better most builds of Linux include a copy of a free tool with some great features for cloning hard drives with bad sectors.GNU ddrescue. ![]() Linux: This open source free operating system gives applications far more control of the hardware they interface with and is well suited for handling this type of issue. Fortunately, there is another OS capable of running on your computer that does not suffer from these same constraints. The Windows host controller, unfortunately, does not allow software running in Windows to directly control ATA commands issued to the drive (such as read timeouts) which are necessary to effectively clone as much data as possible from hard drives with bad sectors. ![]() Currently, there is no known workaround for this in Windows. However, none are well suited to the task simply because all Windows-based applications rely on the Windows host controller to interface with the drive. This may be partly true, as some employ bad sector skipping code to jump ahead a large number of sectors when a bad sector is hit and attempt to continue. Why you can't clone in Windows: There are a great number of Windows-based data recovery and backup programs out there that make claims of being able to clone hard drives with bad sectors. Neither Data Medics LLC, the owner of this forum nor its author take any responsibility for the results of any DIY data recovery attempts. Also if your hard drive is clicking, making other strange noise, showing the wrong capacity, or not appearing in BIOS you should immediately power it down and seek professional advice. Please Note: if your data is critical to your life and/or business it is always best to seek out professional data recovery services rather than attempt this yourself. However, for the sake of this tutorial, we'll assume that you don't have access to such hardware and need to do this using software only. The best way to clone is using specialized hardware such as DeepSpar Disk Imager, Data Extractor (in PC-3000), Atola, etc. In data recovery, it is best practice to always clone first because in many cases there are bad sector areas of supposed "healthy" hard drives that can cause them to fail during the process. Attempting to scan and recover data from such a drive directly without cloning first is very likely to result in the drive completely failing. Introduction: When a hard drive is known, or assumed, to have bad sectors the first thing that you should ever do before attempting data recovery is getting a good clone of the good sectors which you can work from. This is a subject that comes up often on the various forums, so I figure I'll just create a tutorial about it and when the subject arises we can just point people here.
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