Failing 2TB Seagate HDD clone-able with RAW COPY?

[bandbroad]

This 2TB drive is used for storage in my W7 i5 16GB tower. It's only 16 months old, but it's suddenly developed bad sectors and will likely fail entirely very soon.
For the moment, I'm able to copy files to another drive but it's extremely slow - like 11 minutes per 1 GB. And there's about 900GB I'd like to retrieve.
Will RAW COPY help with this? Does it do the copying in DOS? How does it cope with bad sectors?

[DRUG]

If you can, take it to a pro.

If you can't, perhaps a linux distro with hddsuperclone might be your best choice.

[bandbroad]

I am a pro. Retired pc builder and serviceman. So RAW COPY won't do the job?

[SOSdonnees]

>> If you can, take it to a pro.

> I am a pro. Retired pc builder and serviceman

By "pro", user DRUG probably meant a pro in data recovery. Not a professional in PC building.
It is like he suggests going to surgeon and you answer him that you are a general practitioner. Both are useful, but not the same specialization.

> If you can't, perhaps a linux distro with hddsuperclone might be your best choice.

I agree. Both hddsuperclone and ddrescue will allow software based low level cloning.
Expect some learning curve before you can use them efficiently.

[bandbroad]

Thanks for the tips, folks.
I should have said the data isn't really important - certainly not enough to warrant paying for its recovery.
Actually, I've managed to retrieve a lot of the files using Beyond Compare. Only problem with this app is that the ailing drive occasionally disappears from Windows and I have to reboot to see it again.
Then, when I restart Beyond Compare it insists on 'refreshing' the status of the source and target drives and that takes 35 minutes.

Re imaging or cloning, I've ordered another 2TB HDD and as soon as it arrives I'll try those processes in DOS.

BTW: Re RAW COPY, isn't this app one of your own minting? I mean, the blurb on this page:
https://hddguru.com/software/HDD-Raw-Copy-Tool/
...makes it sound very impressive. But at least one of you - DRUG - appears to doubt its capabilities

[DRUG]

BTW: Re RAW COPY, isn't this app one of your own minting? I mean, the blurb on this page:
https://hddguru.com/software/HDD-Raw-Copy-Tool/
...makes it sound very impressive. But at least one of you - DRUG - appears to doubt its capabilities

I don't doubt it's capabilities, but based on the issue you described, and having no knowledge on how to perform firmware mods I'm sugesting linux (and hddsuperclone) instead of Windows (and hdd raw copy) as the first mentioned O.S has less issues mounting bad drives. The superclone can also aid you in reverse imaging, sector skipping etc.

Hdd RAW copy is a good tool, don't doubt it. But it's not the best tool for your issue. (Neither is hddsuperclone but is as close as it gets if you have no experience working with drives on a firmware level or pro tools at your disposal)

[fzabkar]

IIUC, HDD-Raw-Copy-Tool is only appropriate for cloning healthy drives. It doesn't know how to deal with bad media, at least not in the way that the other Linux based tools do.

[pcimage]

IIUC, HDD-Raw-Copy-Tool is only appropriate for cloning healthy drives. It doesn't know how to deal with bad media, at least not in the way that the other Linux based tools do.

I have to agree with this. In the absence of a hardware imager then Linux based tools are the next best thing. Windows is poor at handling the unexpected (I.e. bad sectors)

[bandbroad]

Thanks guys.

After doing more research it seems that the best app for the job is DDRescue, run from DOS or Linux. After trying the DOS option, I think the app will work best from a Linux base, because there's a DDRescui GUI add-on that should ensure correct identification of the source and target drives - something I found difficult in a command line environment.

However, after trying Linux Mint I found it interesting enough to do a dedicated install on a spare computer, so I should be able to do the clone there, by slaving the source and target drives to the main system.