Problems backing up drive - prior to drive upgrade

maxwelltfmaxwelltf
edited February 2009 in Hardware
Hi there - I have a dell C640 laptop with a hard drive that is beginning to show a couple of data errors here and there. The system still runs quite well. I have a new 2.5" drive to replace it, and am trying to first do an image or backup on the installed drive. I understand some of the data on this drive will be corrupted. I already have all of my documents and personal information copied to an external drive, so that is 'safe', as safe is. What I am trying to do now is image or backup the system and installed programs so I can bring that over to the new drive. I'd like to avoid reinstalling all of that by hand.

This morning I have attempted to do a Microsoft backup and it is not able to complete and provides the following report info (below). Clearly, this is not going to work, unless you have some suggestions. Are there some disk repairs tools I can use to 'mend' and mitigate the issues? should I run diskcheck, or try to use diskpatch (recovery), or???? I also have acronis and can boot that from the CD. I tried to image the C drive but it was unable to read some sectors. I chose ignore all, but it appeared to get hung up (although I may try it again and let it run overnite). My thinking is if I can get this system over to a new drive, can some repairs be done to the system such that the system becomes healthy again?


===MICROSOFT BACKUP REPORT============
Operation: Backup
Active backup destination: File
Media name: "2-14p-2009 ASR C640 Backup.bkf created 2/15/2009 at 11:25 AM"

Backup Type: Normal
Backup started on 2/15/2009 at 11:25 AM.
Error: Could not access portions of directory System State\COM+ Class Registration Database.
You may not have permission to open the file, or the directory may be missing or damaged. Please contact the owner or administrator.

Error: Could not access portions of directory System State\Registry.
You may not have permission to open the file, or the directory may be missing or damaged. Please contact the owner or administrator.

Backup completed on 2/15/2009 at 11:34 AM.
Directories: 173
Files: 2778
Bytes: 512,676,300
Time: 8 minutes and 23 seconds
Critical files that make up System State were not successfuly backed up.
Restoring this backup set will cause system failure.
The operation did not successfully complete.

Comments

  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited February 2009
    Max, I'm glad you've already backed up what's most important. Sounds like the drive is on it's way to permanent failure. But perhaps it's a file system and can be repaired. At this point, I think your best bet would be to perform checkdisk operation. Go to the icon for the drive(s)/partition(s), right click, select properties, select tools, click on the "Check Now" button, put a check mark in both boxes, click "Start," and restart the system if it prompts you to.
  • maxwelltfmaxwelltf
    edited February 2009
    Leonardo wrote:
    Max, I'm glad you've already backed up what's most important. Sounds like the drive is on it's way to permanent failure. But perhaps it's a file system and can be repaired. At this point, I think your best bet would be to perform checkdisk operation. Go to the icon for the drive(s)/partition(s), right click, select properties, select tools, click on the "Check Now" button, put a check mark in both boxes, click "Start," and restart the system if it prompts you to.

    Leonardo, or anyone who has some thoughts, I ran Seagate disk tools for Windows on this drive, and it failed. No surprise. Since my goal here is to try to transfer the system and programs from this drive to my new drvie, as a last step or two, I could try one of the following:

    - run seagate disk tools from DOS since it has the ability to do sector repair
    - run chkdsk (not sure of the / options on this command)
    - run some sort of sector data recovery tool like diskpatch

    any thoughts?
  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited February 2009
    If Seagate tools shows the drive to have failed, then Checkdisk won't do anything other than possibly cause more damage by running the disk intensively.

    I can't help you with data salvage, but there are some others here are knowledgeable.
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited February 2009
    For data recovery on an accessible disk with bad sectors, I strongly suggest spinrite.
  • maxwelltfmaxwelltf
    edited February 2009
    OK - why is that, may I ask?
  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited February 2009
    Data recovery utility
  • maxwelltfmaxwelltf
    edited February 2009
    OK - I have SpinRite, I'm just not sure how to make the boot CD. Everytime I use spinrite to make the CD, it just puts the same spinrite.exe file (about 170kb) onto the CD. Strange. What am I missing? Also, will SpinRite recognize external USB or Firewire drives attached via PCMCIA? This is the only way I can possibly clone my drive since this is a laptop.
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