Re: Not homebiult - but maybe a diy fix - Dell Desktop failed hdd!

HI Sue

Thanks for the quick answer

Palindrome wrote:
Adrian wrote:
HI Folks

Just spent a total of 2 hours online & on the phone to Dell support -
at the end of which they agreed that the HDD on this Vostro 200 is faulty ! Grr !

Anyway - hard drive is currently running OK - but as soon as the PC is powered down, it'll take possibly 20 attempts to re-boot - each time the is invisible in the bios, it 'clicks' but doesn't seem able to spin up & read the drive...

Dell are sending an engineer, sometime... with a brand new hard drive.
I already have backups of all the data - but reinstalling the s/w and config is going to be a right pain!

So - I got to thinking - how about cloning the hard drive ?

The dodgy disk is a Western Digital WD1600 AAJS (160gb) - but only 90gig or so currently in use...

So - could I buy a 100-or-so gig hdd and clone the disk to it - and then, maybe, clone it back to the new one that the Dell Man is bringing ?

Recommentations for suitable software welcomed...


Transferring 90 gig is going to take several hours *and* stress the drive a lot. If it is flaky already, attempting an image copy stands a good chance of killing it permanently.

<g> - happy days !
Fair point though..


So buy a 250 GByte drive and use it first to backup all the irreplaceable stuff - documents, email folders, exported settings, etc.

As it happens I did that last night - it's on a USB hard drive and on another drive on the network


If the drive is still alive and kicking after that - then do a file-based copy of the hard drive. If that dies part-way through, at least you will have the files that you managed to get so far.

I think Dell has one of those hidden partition tricks -
Acronis claims to be able to clone the whole thing - which seems like a good plan.


If the drive is still alive after that - then do an image copy.

My favourite software at the moment is Acronis True Image.

It's a bit belt and braces - but better than have an image copy fail part way through, with the drive permanently dead, and nothing of any use at all.

Good advice..

Western Digital have their own freebie cloning software - but they're very reticent about what it can & can't do - and seem to recommend using some 'real' clone s/w...

Seems like it's going to cost me a space hard drive anyway - but maybe with True Image I can arrange that it's always there as a mirror in case of future disasters...


Thanks
Adrian

--
Sue
.

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