clone drive on laptop

fitdellfitdell
edited March 2009 in Hardware
i want to transfer contents of my damaged drive of my dell inspiron laptop onto another hdd, but i have no way of connecting two drives at once. Is it possible to connect a usb external drive, transfer to that, remove old damaged drive install the new one and transfer data from usb drive onto new one?

i would use something like acronis/migrate, or anything else you suggest. thanks

Comments

  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited March 2009
    I'm just going to make an itemized list of things kicking around in my head:
    1. Cloning a damaged hard drive is a bad idea. The defects will be mirrored in the file system of the new drive.
    2. To transfer your data: Remove the damaged drive from the system, install a new hard drive, reinstall Windows on the new drive, connect the damaged drive to a USB adapter and transfer your data. Dispose of old hard disk.

      - or -
    3. To transfer your data: Connect external hard disk, copy data from damaged drive to external, power down and remove damaged drive, install a new hard drive, reinstall Windows on the new drive, reconnect external, copy data to the new hard drive. Dispose of old hard disk.

    Answer it? :)
  • fitdellfitdell
    edited March 2009
    Thanks, why isn't the mirroring you mention a problem when transfering my data?
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited March 2009
    Say you have a book with damaged pages, but the text is 99% still readable if you squint hard enough, smooth out the wrinkles or put the shreds back together. Mirroring a hard drive is like making a copy of the book, damaged pages and all. Obviously that's not going to work. Copying files just transcribes the text to a new, fresh book. You've only lost the text that was well and truly damaged beyond recognition.

    In a more technical perspective, files can become damaged in two ways:

    1. Physical defects of the hard drive: the magnetic platter that stores data has become corrupted, thereby rendering any data that was stored in the defective areas unreadable.

    2. Software defects: the master file table which indexes the location of stored files has fouled up, the file system is damaged and can no longer read stored files, or Windows is just plain screwed somehow and gumming up the works.

    In both cases, the same symptom is presented to you, the user: Windows doesn't boot, or certain files don't open, or Windows repeatedly crashes.

    The problem with mirroring is that all of these possible defects are recreated on a new drive, as a mirror is a 1:1 exact copy, damage and all. Copying files, on the other hand, picks the files up and transplants them on the new drive, but it doesn't transfer a facsimile of the defects that created the corruption on the old hard disk.

    In the aftermath of a copy, you may have a few damaged/unreadable files to delete, but that's a far sight better than copying a defect that makes any file you <i>ever</i> happen to store in that location unreadable.
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