How To Back Up Failing HDD to another HDD.

[GeForceX]

Hey guys,

I have a friend whose hard drive is failing (S.M.A.R.T. shows failure and will not boot to Windows XP). He is concerned about all of his files on that hard drive. I already ordered a new hard drive to replace it for him and to transfer all files over. My question is... how do I make a direct copy to copy from one hard drive to another hard drive without changing anything?

I did a search and came up with a plan. I would like people to tell me if it's safe to do so.

Download BartPE and the plugin ImageDrive XML. Run BartPE with both hard drives in the PC and commence an image copy. Correct? Any problems with this?

Thanks.

 

[GeForceX]

I've run into some kind of wall. I need to back up the image of the failing hard drive but I have no place to back it up to. I don't know if a USB flash would work (I don't even have one). I tried to back it up to the newer hard drive but it doesn't show up on BartPE. Any ideas how I could back up the image file?

 

[tmclaugh]

Grab a copy of either unstoppable copier by roadkill (google), or R-Studio. Unstoppable copier will copy over all files, but not the O.S. in working order. R-Studio will allow you to recover the entire drive (if it runs well) and I believe will make an image to the new drive. If he doesn't care about the windows install, I'd stick with Unstoppable copier after reinstalling windows on the new drive.