HDD GURU FORUMS

hi on attempting to clone my Hdd with acronis,within 5 mins acronis stated that clone was not possible due to 1.a bad sector or 2. something could not be read E.G software.Could it be that when i attempted to clone, that acronis could not read two exe programs those being HDAT2 and MHDD,that not being the case as they were removed and it still would not clone,i have only asked this for future reference.However i do wish to clone this Hdd in researching this conflict i have conflicting information(nothing new there)should i run CHCKDSK outside of windows?Would somebody please if they could find the time to reply.I would prefer to hear from a Pro of what i should attempt.I fully respect that your time is of great value. The Hdd i wish to clone is a 500gb seagate\ i have the option then to either clone to another seagate 500gb [sata] or a 500gb western digital.First things first how do i discover which and where the bad sector is and how do i work around it.I mean to say order the Hdd not to go near the damaged area if indeed it is damaged.I know that these questions may seem dumb as i have only been on a p.c for 18 months(other than x box which does not interest me anymore)Thank-you for taking the time to read this.

Unfortunately I can't understand several of your questions. Also I usually don't reply to hypothetical questions, for reasons I won't go into here, so I'll just reply to some of them:

skitzer wrote:hi on attempting to clone my Hdd with acronis,within 5 mins acronis stated that clone was not possible due to 1.a bad sector

This is expected behaviour - Acronis TrueImage (and Ghost, CloneXXL etc.) are not designed for cloning disks with problems. Although I've seen an option in Acronis for it to ignore bad sectors, it is still not the cloning software to choose in that situation IMHO. Search the forum for cloning software recommendations and discussions in previous threads. Choices depend on your skills, experience, time & equipment available to practice with, your cost limits, functionality expected etc.

skitzer wrote:However i do wish to clone this Hdd in researching this conflict i have conflicting information(nothing new there)should i run CHCKDSK outside of windows?

I don't know what you mean by "this conflict", nor do I know why you are asking about chkdsk - but here are a couple of suggestions, which is the best I can do without understanding the context of your question: Don't run chkdsk on a disk where you have no backup, and therefore don't run chkdsk on a disk before trying to clone it (since that usually means you don't have a backup).

skitzer wrote:First things first how do i discover which and where the bad sector is

IMHO the answer depends what you're trying to do e.g. to clone the disk, or to use the disk without cloning, or to try to discover how faulty the disk is, or ... If you're trying to clone the disk, you do not start by trying to discover where the unreadable sectors are - instead you use cloning hardware or software which is designed to cope with unreadable sectors that it finds on the source disk.

skitzer wrote:i have only been on a p.c for 18 months

Understood - FYI this isn't a general PC forum, so don't be surprised if answers here aren't as detailed as you want. I hope the above helps. If not, then just ignore