Posted on 04/23/2018 3:46:45 AM PDT by poconopundit
Cloning a corrupted hard drive doesnt work. Reinstall Windows from scratch and try identifying files you want to save from the bad drive (if you can boot and see them to copy).
Boot from a CD or the other working drive and then use file manager to view the non-booting drive.
There are free downloadable Linux CD/DVD images which let you view Windows volumes.
Never bothered with SSDs - have only had one HD crash and that was from a off-balance CD that shook it to death in short order - current HD is 8 years old and humming smooth.
If the computer was an older model, it's likley the BIOS needed to be updated to be able to accepts all the Win10 updates - I hjave a year+ old laptop that I had to do some BIOS updates on to make it fully compatible with the Win10 updates even though it came with Win10.
Good luck
Another vote for Acronis TrueImage here, but please note that it’s not freeware. Any freeware other than dd is not going to be trustworthy.
Also, SSDs are fine as primary drives, but you MUST, MUST, MUST have real-time incremental backups! In my experience, the average life of an SSD is roughly two years. When an SSD fails, it fails catastrophically, like flipping a switch. That’s why your backup plan is critical.
Also, leave a little room at the end of each disk volume unallocated (not formatted). The SSD can utilize it to swap it for sectors (memory chips) which are slowly going bad. There are already some in reserve you cant see, but not many.
I put an ssd in as a boot drive and it seemed to be fine until major update time. I used acronis to clone the old hdd but version level updates wouldn’t take. The partions weren’t set in the right order.
And yet another vote for Acronis.
Samsung SSDs are more reliable, overall. Consider those, next time.
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Ditto on Samsung SSD. Got a Samsung 500 GB SSD two years ago to upgrade an old iMac. Works perfectly (knock on wood).
Additional info on SSD. Enabled TRIM via Terminal.app after SSD was installed.
Make sure it’s a LIVE CD
(and boot it from a thumbnail USB)
Thanks, Trebb,
Your luck with HD drives is pretty impressive.
That BIOS compatibility issue is interesting. That might explain why two PNY disks went bad on me — with these constant Windows 10 updates. PC was about 5 years old.
Institute a backup routine. I am using Macrium Reflect to perform incremental backups to another machine, a NAS.
Why are you limiting your software search to Free?
Hardware is not free. Why do you think that software should be free?
I haven't used a CD in years. They have gone the way of the floppys before them. I rarely use a DVD as well. I xfer data over the network, or wireless, or use memory sticks/cards.
With multiple drives, you can have multiple, bootable drives of differing OSs. Just select which is the boot drive in your BIOS.
How old is your PC (and have you ever flashed the BIOS)?
Hi Fhios,
Thank you. Let me get clear. Are you saying all your programs and Windows 10 OS should be on the SSD, and the user data on a separate disk?
In my case I use a laptop exclusively. I use USBs for incremental backup. But sounds like I should be using a hard disk for my user data. So for the laptop, should I take an external HD drive with me all the time? The laptop only has one disk.
Many thanks.
PC is 4 or 5 years old. Never heard of flashing the BIOS, but it sounds like good advice.
OK. Three recommendations for Acronis are a charm! I’ll get that to avoid future trouble. Many thanks.
If it is only 4-5 years old, you shouldn’t have a problem (it should already be able to boot from Flash-drive (USB)).
Normally, if a person isn’t having issues with the PC itself, you shouldn’t attempt to flash your BIOS unless you are comfy doing so (but it isn’t that hard, and there are walk-throughs available how to do it.. it would only take a maximum of, maybe 5 minutes).
I’ve heard that Acronis can be pricey. I use an “engineered” version of Clonezilla at work— GPartEd which is Linux based. We don’t have an image server to PXE boot from so this is what I came up with.
Also yeah, a no no to clone a corrupt drive.
SSDs seem convenient but they are generally smaller in size than standard HDDs, unless you want to pay quite a bit more.
I’ve had a few of these get zotted in tablets. And if you want to put one into an existing laptop that has the standard 2.5” HDD, then you have to update the BIOS or you’ll get “invalid partition table.”
With GPartED you just need two usb drives
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