Bad Hard Drive Question

[Scott]

I have a WD 80GB hard drive in a Gateway E-3200. A couple of times
when booting, it didn't recognize the OS. I ran a hard drive diagnostics,
and it said the drive "contains one or more errors that cannot be fixed".

Just prior to this, I did a complete drive image using Acronis. I ordered a
new 80GB drive. When it arrives and I restore the drive image to the new
HD, will any of the hard drive errors on the old drive have been picked
up by the Acronis backup image and transfered to the new drive...or are
the HD errors a hardware issue?

Currently, the old HD is booting okay, and all programs, drivers, etc. seem
to be working fine.

Thanks!
Scott

[BillW50]

Post by Scott
I have a WD 80GB hard drive in a Gateway E-3200. A couple of times
when booting, it didn't recognize the OS. I ran a hard drive
diagnostics, and it said the drive "contains one or more errors that
cannot be fixed".
Just prior to this, I did a complete drive image using Acronis. I
ordered a new 80GB drive. When it arrives and I restore the drive
image to the new HD, will any of the hard drive errors on the old
drive have been picked up by the Acronis backup image and transfered

to the new drive...or are the HD errors a hardware issue?

Post by Scott
Currently, the old HD is booting okay, and all programs, drivers,
etc. seem to be working fine.
Thanks!
Scott

I too sometimes use Acronis True Image. And while it has its good
points, one bad one is it can't restore any backup with bad sectors. Did
you check the logs? Did you do a verify?

[Scott]

Post by BillW50

Post by Scott
I have a WD 80GB hard drive in a Gateway E-3200. A couple of times
when booting, it didn't recognize the OS. I ran a hard drive
diagnostics, and it said the drive "contains one or more errors that
cannot be fixed".
Just prior to this, I did a complete drive image using Acronis. I
ordered a new 80GB drive. When it arrives and I restore the drive
image to the new HD, will any of the hard drive errors on the old
drive have been picked up by the Acronis backup image and transfered

to the new drive...or are the HD errors a hardware issue?

Post by Scott
Currently, the old HD is booting okay, and all programs, drivers,
etc. seem to be working fine.
Thanks!
Scott

I too sometimes use Acronis True Image. And while it has its good
points, one bad one is it can't restore any backup with bad sectors. Did
you check the logs? Did you do a verify?
--
Bill
Windows 2000 SP4 (5.00.2195)
Asus EEE PC 701G4 ~ 2GB RAM ~ 16GB-SDHC

Bill,

I went into DOS and did a Scandisk with a complete surface scan...and it
says there are no bad sectors. Can I assume that I'll be able to restore the
Acronis drive image to a new HD if Scandisk says the drive has no errors?

The diagnostic program that found the "errors" is an old program on a floppy:
DLGAIAG Western Digital "AC" drive - DOS Diagnostic. I looked and
couldn't find the log anywhere from this test.

Just before that, when I tried my trusty GWSCAN.EXE diagnostic tool, it
said it "detected no drive", so I couldn't run it.

No, I didn't do a verify when creating a backup image with Acronis.

So, what do you think?

Thanks!
Scott

[BillW50]

Post by Scott

Post by BillW50

Post by Scott
I have a WD 80GB hard drive in a Gateway E-3200. A couple of times
when booting, it didn't recognize the OS. I ran a hard drive
diagnostics, and it said the drive "contains one or more errors that
cannot be fixed".
Just prior to this, I did a complete drive image using Acronis. I
ordered a new 80GB drive. When it arrives and I restore the drive
image to the new HD, will any of the hard drive errors on the old
drive have been picked up by the Acronis backup image and
transferred to the new drive...or are the HD errors a hardware
issue?
Currently, the old HD is booting okay, and all programs, drivers,
etc. seem to be working fine.
Thanks!
Scott

I too sometimes use Acronis True Image. And while it has its good
points, one bad one is it can't restore any backup with bad sectors.
Did you check the logs? Did you do a verify?

Bill,
I went into DOS and did a Scandisk with a complete surface scan...and
it says there are no bad sectors. Can I assume that I'll be able to
restore the Acronis drive image to a new HD if Scandisk says the drive
has no errors?
The diagnostic program that found the "errors" is an old program on a
floppy: DLGAIAG Western Digital "AC" drive - DOS Diagnostic. I looked
and couldn't find the log anywhere from this test.
Just before that, when I tried my trusty GWSCAN.EXE diagnostic tool,
it said it "detected no drive", so I couldn't run it.
No, I didn't do a verify when creating a backup image with Acronis.
So, what do you think?

It must be in FAT32 format to use DOS tools on it, eh? And IDE drives
uses technology that normally hides bad sectors. And I know of no tools
that will find them until there starts to be so many of them that the
drive can't hide them anymore. This is done because all brand new hard
drives has bad sectors. So it hides them from you and your tools and
won't use these few bad ones.

As far as whether Acronis True Image will restore correctly or not, I
won't worry too much. As the new drive is coming and the old one appears
to be holding up. So you can make another copy if somehow the backup
somehow fails. <grin>

[BillW50]

Btw, if anybody is interested in Acronis True Image for free and just
interested in the basics and have either a WD or Seagate/Maxtor hard
drive... you can get either one here.

Acronis True Image Seagate Edition (DiscWizard)
http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/discwizard

Acronis True Image WD Edition
http://support.wdc.com/product/downloaddetail.asp?swid=119&type=download&wdc_lang=en

[Scott]

Post by BillW50

Post by Scott

Post by BillW50

Post by Scott
I have a WD 80GB hard drive in a Gateway E-3200. A couple of times
when booting, it didn't recognize the OS. I ran a hard drive
diagnostics, and it said the drive "contains one or more errors that
cannot be fixed".
Just prior to this, I did a complete drive image using Acronis. I
ordered a new 80GB drive. When it arrives and I restore the drive
image to the new HD, will any of the hard drive errors on the old
drive have been picked up by the Acronis backup image and
transferred to the new drive...or are the HD errors a hardware
issue?
Currently, the old HD is booting okay, and all programs, drivers,
etc. seem to be working fine.
Thanks!
Scott

I too sometimes use Acronis True Image. And while it has its good
points, one bad one is it can't restore any backup with bad sectors.
Did you check the logs? Did you do a verify?

Bill,
I went into DOS and did a Scandisk with a complete surface scan...and
it says there are no bad sectors. Can I assume that I'll be able to
restore the Acronis drive image to a new HD if Scandisk says the drive
has no errors?
The diagnostic program that found the "errors" is an old program on a
floppy: DLGAIAG Western Digital "AC" drive - DOS Diagnostic. I looked
and couldn't find the log anywhere from this test.
Just before that, when I tried my trusty GWSCAN.EXE diagnostic tool,
it said it "detected no drive", so I couldn't run it.
No, I didn't do a verify when creating a backup image with Acronis.
So, what do you think?

It must be in FAT32 format to use DOS tools on it, eh? And IDE drives
uses technology that normally hides bad sectors. And I know of no tools
that will find them until there starts to be so many of them that the
drive can't hide them anymore. This is done because all brand new hard
drives has bad sectors. So it hides them from you and your tools and
won't use these few bad ones.
As far as whether Acronis True Image will restore correctly or not, I
won't worry too much. As the new drive is coming and the old one appears
to be holding up. So you can make another copy if somehow the backup
somehow fails. <grin>
--
Bill
Windows 2000 SP4 (5.00.2195)
Asus EEE PC 701G4 ~ 2GB RAM ~ 16GB-SDHC

Bill,

Sounds good. I should have the new drive in 3-4 days. I'll report back to
let you know how the Acronis Restore went. In the meantime, the old drive
is working fine.

Thanks again!
Scott

[Scott]

Post by BillW50

Post by Scott

Post by BillW50

Post by Scott
I have a WD 80GB hard drive in a Gateway E-3200. A couple of times
when booting, it didn't recognize the OS. I ran a hard drive
diagnostics, and it said the drive "contains one or more errors that
cannot be fixed".
Just prior to this, I did a complete drive image using Acronis. I
ordered a new 80GB drive. When it arrives and I restore the drive
image to the new HD, will any of the hard drive errors on the old
drive have been picked up by the Acronis backup image and
transferred to the new drive...or are the HD errors a hardware
issue?
Currently, the old HD is booting okay, and all programs, drivers,
etc. seem to be working fine.
Thanks!
Scott

I too sometimes use Acronis True Image. And while it has its good
points, one bad one is it can't restore any backup with bad sectors.
Did you check the logs? Did you do a verify?

Bill,
I went into DOS and did a Scandisk with a complete surface scan...and
it says there are no bad sectors. Can I assume that I'll be able to
restore the Acronis drive image to a new HD if Scandisk says the drive
has no errors?
The diagnostic program that found the "errors" is an old program on a
floppy: DLGAIAG Western Digital "AC" drive - DOS Diagnostic. I looked
and couldn't find the log anywhere from this test.
Just before that, when I tried my trusty GWSCAN.EXE diagnostic tool,
it said it "detected no drive", so I couldn't run it.
No, I didn't do a verify when creating a backup image with Acronis.
So, what do you think?

It must be in FAT32 format to use DOS tools on it, eh? And IDE drives
uses technology that normally hides bad sectors. And I know of no tools
that will find them until there starts to be so many of them that the
drive can't hide them anymore. This is done because all brand new hard
drives has bad sectors. So it hides them from you and your tools and
won't use these few bad ones.
As far as whether Acronis True Image will restore correctly or not, I
won't worry too much. As the new drive is coming and the old one appears
to be holding up. So you can make another copy if somehow the backup
somehow fails. <grin>
--
Bill
Windows 2000 SP4 (5.00.2195)
Asus EEE PC 701G4 ~ 2GB RAM ~ 16GB-SDHC

Bill:

I received the new WD hard drive for my Win98 machine. I set up Acronis True
Image to restore. I noticed that even though the external backup drive partition
with the backup image is formatted in NTFS it showed it was restoring the
Win98 drive as FAT32. All went well, and the drive is working fine.

Thanks for all your insight!
Scott

[BillW50]

Post by Scott
I received the new WD hard drive for my Win98 machine. I set up
Acronis True Image to restore. I noticed that even though the external
backup drive partition with the backup image is formatted in NTFS it
showed it was restoring the Win98 drive as FAT32. All went well, and
the drive is working fine.
Thanks for all your insight!
Scott

Good deal Scott!