Well, no one answered my last question, so here's another

I was trying to do a Disk->Disk with Ghost 11.5 and it said my source HD had bad blocks. So I ran "chkdsk /r" and it fixed what it could, but there were still some bad blocks...or so says Ghost. I couldn't tell how many bad blocks or how much of the HD, but I told Ghost to continue and ignore future bad blocks.

So I guess I have bad sectors in the data area of the source HD, and I may end up with some corrupt files on the destination HD. But is the destination HD likely to be any worse than the source HD? What I mean is, is it better to try and "repair" the source HD in some way, or is a file with bad blocks corrput in any case, and it's better to salvage as much as I can on the destination HD?

When a HD has bad blocks in the data area, and maybe it is signifying a HD problem that would get worse, is the best course of action to Ghost the HD to a brand new HD (meaning the new HD won't be any worse than the source HD), or try and "repair" the source HD using utilities like Norton or Chkdsk (meaning that the new HD won't get a good image from the source HD until these bad blocks are gone)?

klerch

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Usually means folks here do not have experience with the issue--so do not offer a *guess* answer--although I often times will *stick my head out*--gets knocked off frequently  !

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It's hard to answer your questions--because it depends on a lot of variables!

As Tator said:

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But, how best to do that--using Ghost and cloning--direct cloning or image files?  or new HDD transfer software from the manufacturer?  or *copy and paste*?  All depends on what's working on that old HDD--and if it's dieing!

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Basically, Ghost warned you that it has encountered *bad blocks* on the source HDD (meaning it can not read the data in those blocks), you told Ghost to ignore them and continue anyway--so Ghost will transfer the *good block* data to the new HDD--but will not transfer the *bad block* data (it's being ignored per your request!)--so any data in those *bad blocks* will be missing from the new destination HDD--but you should now have a *backup* of at least the *good block* data!  (If you have selected a *sector-by-sector copy of the source HDD, I think Ghost will still not be able to transfer the *bad block* data--it can't *read* it, so can't transfer it!)

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Assuming Ghost is successful in transferring the *good blocks* (a dieing HDD can be flaky--the Ghost results may also be *flaky*!), I'm guessing your destination HDD should be no worse off than the original source HDD.

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I wouldn't try repairs until you have transferred as much of your data as you can (or, at least as much as you care about!) to another HDD--using whatever method makes sense in your situation.  Then, you can attempt to use repair techniques to possibly *recover* data in those *bad blocks*.

How to recover data in *bad blocks*?  Well, you mentioned *I ran "chkdsk /r" and it fixed what it could, but there were still some bad blocks...*--that's a first step.

I don't know if Norton Utilities still offers a repair function for NTFS HDDs--used to have a disk utility for FAT based file systems.  Perhaps *Disk Keeper* or *Perfect Disk* have recovery/repair functions.

You will see Gibson Research Corporation's     Spinrite    product mentioned fairly often.

Here's a Google search on recover bad sectors.

And, a starting point:  Ask Leo--How do I fix a bad sector on my hard drive?

If you can *recover* the data in the *bad blocks*, then you can transfer the recovered data along with all the *good block* data from the source HDD to a destination HDD.