I have a dilemma and need advise for an alternative

If I use media tools pro, when it encounters a bad sector,
it writes "unrecoverable data" or something to that effect.
If I use winhex, it writes "BAD SECTOR"
If I copy with ntexplorer, it writes whatever is in the buffer
from the last good read.

I need a solution that writes nothing to the destination drive
if a read error occurs on the source media.
then I could attempt multiple tries (at different times) at
cloning a "slow/weak" drive.

I have cloned the drive , and also made an image of the clone.
but I need to try to recover some of the sectors that weren't
correctly copied on previous attempts, without destroying the
already copied sectors.

any suggestions besides a hardware solution?

To me writing "BAD SECTOR" makes sense.
After recovering data you could just search all files for that signature and see right away which files could be corrupted.
BTW, isn't this signature is customizable in WinHex?

It probably is, but what I need is to be able to make several
attempts at cloning the bad sectors, without a good read one time
being overwritten by a bad read the next pass.

Check your messages....

_________________
Buy your friends Toshiba\Hitachi and your enemies Seagate.

If u got bad sector, then u should get another algorithm for example ignore CRC Field to get directly on theory the "Data " Field..but this is not possible in all the cases, some times surface problems or, MHA too

Regards

Winhex does give the option of not writing a pattern for unreadable sectors. Just uncheck "write pattern for damaged source sectors" in clone dialog box. Also make sure to check "log procedure silently" so that Winhex will give a log of unread sectors. Also, it's helpful to write a unique pattern to the destination drive before cloning so that it becomes easier to spot unread sectors.

Steve, If you are cloning to another disk (zero fill it first) then the missed sectors from the earlier passes will be "filled in" with more successful later passes, using any tool (media tools pro for example). Write down the bad areas and re-do them. Try reverse. I had so many troubles cloning to image files that I finally went the "to disk" route and it is a lot better. Also another tip: some motherboards (chipsets) are more tolerant than others of bad disks. I had a lot of trouble with media tools and a ASUS motherboard that would start cloning garbage after a certain time. SATA disks are awkward in that sense.