Transfer disk contents *without* cloning tools

Question

Is it possible to "clone" a disk which contains programs by performing a copy of all the disk contents (preserving file attributes) from source to destination disk, and unplugging the source disk and changing the drive letter of the destination disk to match that of the source?

Context

I have a two disk Windows 8 system with a system drive and a data drive. Recently, the data drive developed a number of bad sectors leading to IO errors. I have been sent a replacement drive so I simply need to clone the contents of this data drive onto the replacement. The drive contents include documents & media, user folders (My Documents and related), and some programs (games etc).

Problem

The problem is that the bad sectors on the source disk causes most disk cloning tools to fail with read errors. Attempted approaches include:

1. Disk clone from live boot environment with Acronis True Image. Fails due to read errors.
2. Disk clone from live boot environment with Clonezilla. Fails due to read errors.
3. Disk clone using Roadkil's Unstoppable Copier. Fails due to hardware timeouts in the HDD (application hangs indefinitely).
4. A straightforward copy from source to destination disk using FreeFileSync (preserving file attributes and metadata). This succeeds.

So at the moment I have a replacement disk which contains all of the data from the original disk. Now all I need to is somehow get Windows to replace all references to the old disk to the new one. Is this possible by simply swapping the assigned drive letters? Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

Answer 1

Thanks all for the responses. I went ahead and tried to do the disk clone from Windows, and surprisingly it worked. I've written up my method in case other people find themselves in similar situations and need an alternative to offline clone tools (for the record, I suspect that Ryan's CloneZilla suggestion would have worked if I had taken the time to configure it correctly, so best to try this as a last resort). Method:

1. Copy disk contents - Using FreeFileSync, I copied the contents of the source disk "F" to the destination disk "G", preserving file attributes and running as administrator. I made sure to remove all of the file ignore patterns so that nothing was missed.
2. Disconnect source disk - I shutdown the machine and physically disconnected the SATA cable from the source disk.
3. Assign new drive letter - After powering up the machine (and getting all of the expected errors about the missing disk), I changed the the destination disk drive letter "G" to that of the source drive letter "F" using Windows' Administrative tools.
4. Reboot - After a final reboot, everything worked as expected. Programs which were installed on the now disconnected source disk worked fine when ran off of the destination disk.

In all honestly I expected this to be problematic, as I know that general wisdom dictates you can't simply copy programs across drives and expect them to work. It seems that the real issue is that you can't copy programs across drive letters, but if you're replacing a disk and keeping the drive letter consistent, you can get away with a file transfer, without the need to clone or reinstall.

Answer 2

The best software I have found to clone a disk with sector errors is a properly configured instance of CloneZilla, I use it by booting off Hirens boot cd, there are options to continue on errors.

The only time I've had this not work was on a drive that when I read a specific file the drive would disconnect, the solution at that point was to manually copy the files off and ignore that file. Really it depends on your specific situation and the extent to which the drive is damaged.

Unstoppable Copier is a good choice for copying files, it will continue past broken files (except in cases where the drive disconnects):

Unstoppable Copier

EDIT:

You can change drive letters by right clicking on "My Computer" and going to System Management (Alternatively you can get to Disk Management from Administrative tool in the control panel)

Once in disk management you can right click on a volume and select "Change Drive Letter"

Answer 3

This how I successfully imaged a defective disk: The strategy was to image all drive but avoid a 'sector-by-sector' true image copy from the culprit partition (only). Then image the culprit partition using a simple copy tool to copy data in an imperfect way so the data would just be copied at application level on top of Windows, leaving Windows doing the file access error handling. So:

1. Image the drive (all partitions on it) to a new one but don't copy the data from the culprit partition.

To do this, I used Minitool Partition Wizard Free 9.0. It restarts the system and clones the drive sector by sector without system's OS. Then do it also for the culprit partition, it will hang in unreadable bad sector -let it do so- (error 121). Restart.

2. Make sure your new drive partitions are now per the original drive. IN WINDOWS copy the partition containing errors in Windows with any good 'image' tool. I used EaseUS Todo Backup Free 8.5 using Clone feature and unchecked 'sector by sector clone'. This leaves Windows doing the file access error handling. This copy is willingly imperfect but it turned out to be perfect in my case after a drive compare (with Beyond Compare), even opened files and the registry were intact (ntuser.dat).

3. If the culprit partition was also your Windows boot partition, repair the MBR with Windows Install disk or Windows Repair Tool. Plenty of easy solution out there if you search 'BootMGR is missing'.