Ultimate Boot CD

My startup disk started having problems booting the computer. At one point I got a SMART command failed, which went away. But windows will not boot, it BSODs and then reboots.

So, I turned to UBCD. I can still see all of the files on my drive using READNTFS.

I attempted to use WD Data Lifeguard to clone the partition to a SATA drive partition (the source is a WD HD), but it immediately failed. Upon trying to look at the destination of the backup in READNTFS, I get "Cannot read from sector #0. Or invalid boot sector" or something to that effect. Great. I don't care about the data that was in the destination partition, I just need somewhere to store a copy of the source partition!

How can I fix this problem so the system will detect this partition again (the one I am trying to back up to)?

Thanks,
Ryan

It looks like you have a defective HDD, but to confirm, you need to run one of the diagnostic tools from WD.

But before doing that, you should salvage the data from the HDD first, which I think is what you are trying to do.

For HDD cloning, there are tons of tools available under "Hard Disk Cloning" (Hard Disk Tools 5/5). Did you try those? Partition Saving under "Partition Tools" (Filesystem Tools 1/2) is also worth a try.

In the worst case, if you can't clone the damaged HDD (eg. too many bad sectors), you should copy important files over to another HDD for safe-keeping before testing for defect.

Thanks. What I am more worried about is the HD that Western Digital drive clone messed up. Windows can see it, but it asks me to format it. READNTFS says that it cannot find a boot sector or that it is invalid for this partition. PatchDisk confirms that there is no boot sector. How can I repair this?

My original/defective hard disk now boots Windows (boot sector was corrupted as well as some other stuff on the drive), but I can't clone this disk until I fix the one WD Clone messed up.

Any suggestions?

I don't understand why you have to worry about the clone target.

If you are cloning _to_ that drive, it will be overwritten anyway. You just need to make sure it is not defective (eg. damaged controller, bad sectors etc), which you can determine by running the diag tool from the HDD manufacturer. Otherwise, it can be unformatted for all intents and purposes.