As the title says, I have a dying HDD and I've made a mistake of keeping some of my important files on here whether than on my C: drive. When my computer boots up it greets me with a "S.M.A.R.T status bad, back up and replace" message. The HDD is still accessible but from what I understand it's close to dying, and I want to copy at least a portion of my files from it while I can. The problem is - it's almost impossible for me to copy files from it with Explorer, as most of the time the copying speed is 0kb/s. And I'm not sure if there's software that can let me back up files faster than that - or am I wrong?
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1The answer is going to depend on how badly you want that data and how valuable it is to you. If this data is irreplaceable, and you will go to any lengths to recover it, then stop where you are, shutdown, disconnect the drive, and send it to a data recovery specialist. If the drive is physically failing, any software based recovery attempt may make the entire drive inaccessible. With those warnings out of the way, I've had great luck using ddrescue on linux to recover a hard drive that I thought I would never get the data back from.– Jim Diroff IICommented Aug 12, 2020 at 15:21
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3Backups are things you make before you need them. What you need now is not a backup solution, it is a rescue solution.– TetsujinCommented Aug 12, 2020 at 15:22
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Spinrite is used my many to relocate bad sectors to recover data– Tony Stewart EE75Commented Aug 12, 2020 at 16:41
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When you get that 0kb/s copy speed it's because the file you're trying to copy is in the damaged part of the drive. You're very unlikely to get that back without professional (expen$$$$ive!) data recovery.– Loren PechtelCommented Aug 15, 2020 at 23:48
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2 Answers
If the data is so important that you're willing to pay for recovery, my advice would generally be to unplug the drive immediately and send it to a data recovery expert. You're likely to do more damage trying to read the drive yourself.
If you must try something yourself, you could boot an Ubuntu Live CD, mount the disk read-only in the live environment, and try to read the data to another drive that way, but I'd only try that if you were never going to pay for a recovery service in the first place, like I said, you're likely to just make the problem worse.
I'll leave that assessment to you though
The accepted answer Is not great. If you highly value your data and willing to pay heavily, certainly stop using it and go to a data recovery agency.
If not, DONT do file by file recovery at this time. Get another disk and use gnu ddrescue to bitcopy as much of the drive as time allows at a block level. Then recover from the copy. This will save reads (and reads/writes are compounding the problem) and pull off as much data as possible (for a software solution, given as much time as possible/needed)
As ddrescue can pick up where it left off, I do at least 2 passes - first one normal/forward until speed bogs down, then reverse until done/mostly done and time is out.
You will find copying from the Copy much faster and also be able to chkdsk it.
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There are windows-based disk imaging programs that can also be used (as stated, the OP should definitely remove drive and stop using it and attempt to image it mounted as a secondary drive). I once used Macrium Reflect FREE version to make an image "skipping bad sectors" and store that image on a remote share and then shelved the bad drive. I then mounted the image and recovered what I could from that.– YorikCommented Aug 12, 2020 at 20:37
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1Hi davidgo, your answer is perfect. No way to express it shorter or better. at Yorik: Windows based imaging programs are not an option due to the Windows behaviour when a new drive is connected to a windows system.– r2d3Commented Aug 15, 2020 at 18:17