How do I clone a disk drive with bad sectors?

Question

Current old failing disk: micron c400 512gb 2.5" SATA III

Main and only boot device on Dell XPS L521X 15" running Windows 10 Pro. BSODs and boot failures every few weeks due to bad sectors.

Usually fix with sfc, dism, bootrec, bcdrebuild and chkdsk.

Always boots fine and runs without issue till the next failure.

Currently booting and active.

New disk:

WD Blue 750gb 2.5" SATA III. Chkdsk found no errors.

Steps Taken:

Booting from USB flash with the failing old disk still in the laptop and the new disk connected to the laptop via USB.

1. Clonezilla Bootable USB. Following https://www.tomshardware.com/how-to/clone-your-ssd-or-hard-drive

   At 80%, got the error:

   clonezilla partclone fail please check /var/log/partclone.log

   Cancelled operation, tested/rechecked both disks before trying a different option.

2. EaseUS Disk Copy Pro - WinPE Bootable USB. The process has been on for 16 hours now. Still at 1%, while generating more Failed to write notices.

   Initializing copy, please wait...
   Copy volume via sector by sector
   Failed to write sector. (Disk 2, start sector 19456, sector number 1024)
   Failed to write sector. (Disk 2, start sector 20480, sector number 1024)
   ...

Disk 2 is the new drive with no errors as per Chkdsk.

Image at 10 hours.

I just need to clone my current drive to the new drive. As is, to switch out with the current drive. Of course minus whatever is in the bad sectors that can't be read.

What method out there works? Or what can I change about the ones I've tried to get them to work?

EDIT: I prefer a solution that comes with a bootable USB option. Given its state, I don't want to open the laptop to remove the current drive till I'm done cloning it and writing to it e.g. by installing more software, results in more BSOD scenarios.

Answer 1

ddrescue - the Swiss army knife for dying disks

Use the linux program ddrescue to clone your broken disk. You can run a live linux by booting from a pendrive with your preferred linux distribution nstalled.

On Linuxmint run sudo apt install gddrescue. There are two versions out there, ddrescue by the Gnu Foundation and dd_rescue by Knut Garloff. I prefer the GNU one.

The difference between ddrescue and simple clone software is that ddrescue incorporates a strategy to jump over assumed broken areas, trying to clone what can be cloned easily. This strategy maximises the data output at the beginning of the recovery process where other software does not really get ahead stuck with reading one broken sector after another. Using a logfile allows you to interrupt the cloning process and to continue later.

Do not use chkdsk the way you did

Some people recommend using the chkdsk command. That is bad advice. You should use that command once you have a second clone which is easy to generate as you only have to duplicate your first clone which has no broken sectors. Using chkdsk on the source or on the first clone will basically destroy all evidence for professional commercial recovery software - maybe you will want to use that software at a later moment.

Running chkdsk on a dying disk might result in chkdsk hanging and people wondering what consequence it will have if they power down their disk by force.