Will disk cloning work here?

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greybeard3
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Location: Southampton, UK

Will disk cloning work here?

#1 Post by greybeard3 » Wed Feb 19, 2014 7:08 am

I have messed up the 320Gb Hdd on one of my Samsung Laptops. It started out with a suspect virus which stopped the machine from working correctly, mainly causing problems with passwords. I ran various repair programs and now have a hdd which doesn't work and is reported as being faulty by the Samsung ES-Tool. I suspect the hdd is not actually faulty as it has only been in use for a total of about 30 hours, but probably has had the master boot record etc either erased or corrupted.
I have an identical Samsung laptop in working order and wonder if I can clone the hard drive on that to breath life back into the faulty hdd.
I have an external 500 Gb USB hard drive available for the transfer, and wonder too if I could use the LAN ports on each machine as an alternative.
This is a new area of computer knowledge as far as I am concerned, and I would appreciate any advice you can offer.

StopSpazzing
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Re: Will disk cloning work here?

#2 Post by StopSpazzing » Wed Feb 26, 2014 7:40 am

I don't think the drive going to work right if Samsung's own tool reports it as "faulty". It checks the drive and reads/writes to it to test it. Often people receive faulty drives which are just purchased because of Quality check issues. Everyone who buys their own computer hardware will eventually run across this if not multiple times. I personally would replace the drive by returning it and getting a replacement, but its up to you.


To clone the other drive, you can use Clonezilla, which is included in Parted Magic. You would fist need to run it on the computer you wanted to copy from and create a disc image of the drive onto that 500GB drive, then using clonezilla on other computer with messed up drive, would restore the image from the 500GB drive. Might take 2-8 hours, and you need to do a full drive image backup (I have personally used clonezilla on many computer, works great). While you could use the network, you would still have to make an image, move to a network drive,then restore image to disc by retrieving image from network. You could share the usb 500gb drive on the other computer and connect the computers to router or together, but You will actually lose speed by doing this and better to just plug it directly into the computer with the hdd that needs to be restored.

Let me know if you have any other questions. Good Luck
~Just StopSpazzing~

Visit the UBCD Wiki: http://wiki.ultimatebootcd.com
Please check your UBCD ISO MD5 Hash Sum; May prevent issues later on by not having an exact copy.

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greybeard3
Posts: 4
Joined: Wed Feb 19, 2014 12:38 am
Location: Southampton, UK

Re: Will disk cloning work here?

#3 Post by greybeard3 » Wed Feb 26, 2014 9:26 am

Thanks for your advice, much appreciated. I have had several attempts at wiping, copying and generally re-formatting the faulty drive. All to no avail. I hate giving up but it all comes back to the fact that there are probably damaged sectors on the disk. The drive is out of guarantee even though it has been used very little, so can't return it for exchange.
As a last resort I have downloaded a program named Flobo from the Samsung site which promises to repair faulty HDDs such as mine. I tried this on my desk PC but that is Win7 64 but Flobo was written for Win XP I think. My problem now is to find a boot program which will enable me to run Flobo from CD or flash drive in the laptop. There is BartPE but that is XP vintage. Can UBCD be used to run a program from CD or USB?

StopSpazzing
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Re: Will disk cloning work here?

#4 Post by StopSpazzing » Thu Feb 27, 2014 7:25 am

If its a windows program and can only run in windows XP, then you can use UBCD4Win and build a bartpe for windows xp with drivers for your flash drive or add it manually as there is an option in the program to Build the BartPE.
~Just StopSpazzing~

Visit the UBCD Wiki: http://wiki.ultimatebootcd.com
Please check your UBCD ISO MD5 Hash Sum; May prevent issues later on by not having an exact copy.

Currently Working on Common Issues and Repair Tips on the Wiki.

greybeard3
Posts: 4
Joined: Wed Feb 19, 2014 12:38 am
Location: Southampton, UK

Re: Will disk cloning work here?

#5 Post by greybeard3 » Sat Mar 01, 2014 8:29 am

Thanks for your pointing to UBCDWin but I decided to go with BartPE rather than UBCDWin as the latter program held an awful lot of stuff I would never use. I have now managed to run Flobo through BartPE and it is chuntering away repairing (I hope) as it goes along. It is going to take a few hours before I know whether I am going to avoid getting a replacement drive, and I will let you know in due course.

greybeard3
Posts: 4
Joined: Wed Feb 19, 2014 12:38 am
Location: Southampton, UK

Re: Will disk cloning work here?

#6 Post by greybeard3 » Mon Mar 03, 2014 9:39 am

I had the choice of running a complete overhaul of the disk surfaces or using the fast method. I chose the fast method as the the complete reading and repair would have taken weeks, I think, judging by the progress counter. Even so the flobo program found and repaired many thousand bad sectors. I then tried re-installing Windows 7 and it got to about 70% complete before it gave up on me. So,as time is not on my side I have orderd a new disk drive. Maybe I'll come back to it and let the complete program run at a later date. I appreciate your advice and helpful comments. Many thanks.

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