Copy bad HD to a good HD

[Leonard Chatagnier]

Karl F. Larsen wrote:
> Shannon McMackin wrote:
>> Karl F. Larsen wrote:
>>> Jan Litwiñski wrote:
>>>> G'day Karl,
>
> 	Happy to say, I was able to get the bad HD to run on this
> computer after setting it for "Cable Select (CS). I learned
> this from a friend. The bad HD is now running on this computer.
>
> 	I used dd to copy the bad HD to my /dev/sda13 partition but
> it was done wrong I think. The bad HD has two windows
> programs, one on C: and one on D: and don't ask me why. I
> copied both C: and D: to the same partition which is wrong it
> appears...
>
> 	Now the bad HD can be mounted and files copied to a cd. I
> will try to get this done asap.
>
> 73 Karl
>
>
What version of windows?  The later versions, Vista for sure, have
two partitions; one is the OS and the other is a recovery partition
you use when you want to restore a corrupted windows(MS doesn't put out 
install CDs any more to machine purchasers).  they should
be on separate partitions and they are.  Probably your best bet is
to erase the double copied partition; create another one and copy each
windows partition to a separate one.  You should know what the second
partition is for even if you have to boot to it to find out.  But
don't start the recovery operation unless that's what you want to do.
Your saying that your hard drive is bad but are you sure. Just because
it wont boot doesn't mean the drive is necessarily bad in spite of many'
recommendations to just replace it. Have you tested with test disk or
other disk utilities and found that it was bad. Before I would replace 
it I would use the recovery partition, if you have that in D: to see if 
you can make it boot.  If that doesn't work, I would recover all the 
data possible; then repartition the drive and reinstall.  Same happened 
to me, bought a second hand drive and installed again, then 
repartitioned the so called bad drive that wouldn't boot and reinstalled 
to it again and now have two good drives on that old(1997 Dell) machine. 
  My experience, contrary to most recomendations, is that old drives 
have sectors go out(can't write to them) but if you
mark the bad sectors after repartitioning and reinstall you may have
much life left in the old drive.  In my case, that old bad drive is 
still working after about two year from marking the bad sectors.  FWIW,


-- 
Leonard
lenc5570 at sbcglobal.net