I have an IMGC file I'm attempting to burn to a 250 GB IDE drive. The drive is brand new; before every attempt at writing the image, I reformat the drive. I use WinHIIP to format the drive and then start up HDD Raw Copy Tool to write the image to it. However, of the 9 attempts, each one has ended in failure. Immediately after selecting 'Start' the program locks up, stays at 0%, I usually let it sit and do its thing for 5-10 minutes, and then when I return I receive 'Write Error Occurred at offset...' in the logs. Each error occurs at a different location on the drive and are usually nowhere close to each-other. Additionally, the program 'locks up' immediately following the error, sitting in the not responding state for 3-4 min. I usually attempt to close it afterwards, and it takes 3-4 min. to close. I've attempted writing to the drive on 2 different computers, both running Win10 64bit. The program is running as administrator and I've attempted running it in compatibility mode to see if that would resolve the problem as well.

Does anyone have any advice? Maybe just a bad drive?

I tested the drive, it checked out fine. I'm having a little trouble parsing the rest of your response though. Let me explain my reasoning in a little more detail, as its not a conventional data-recovery job. I have an imgc file that was shared with me, that contains a series of pre-installed applications for a specific non-pc piece of hardware, that uses an IDE drive. Those applications will automatically run when the hard-drive is in use by the hardware, allowing me to perform tasks on the hardware that I otherwise would not be able to.

WinHIIP is able to format the drive to a specific structure that is used by that hardware. After formatting, I need to write the contents of the imgc file, to the drive in question.

From your response this is what I intuited:
1. Read the image from the [source drive] with another program to get it in a different format
2. Use another program

I apologize if I interpreted that wrong, but I'm used to dealing with burning isos to cds, HDD stuff is pretty alien to me.

The image that I received that has the pre-installed applications on it is in imgc format. If I'm unable to use HDD Raw Copy Tool to write to the drive, is there a way for me to convert the imgc format to another and use a different program to write it to the drive?

AIUI, the IMGC file is a compressed sector-by-sector image of the original IDE drive. If this is the case, then there is no point in formatting "the drive to a specific structure that is used by that hardware". Any such "structure" will be restored from the IMGC file.

Google indicates that "WinHIIP is a program that allows access to internal hard disk drives which have been connected via USB-to-IDE". This suggests that you may be using a USB-IDE enclosure. If so, then the enclosure is probably the culprit.

For example, here is one known bug in JMicron JM20337 bridges:

Possible flaw in popular USB-SATA adapter cables :
http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=56&t=632

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

The enclosure isn't the problem, at least not on a macro level (I suppose it could be this particular adapter) as it's worked for others that are performing the exact same sequence of events. I tried skipping the WinHIIP step that everyone else does and that didn't fix the problem either, so no point or not it isn't making a difference. I'll try popping this drive into my T-32 and see if I can get it working there.

I still believe the problem is something that's fundamentally at a software level that I'm not catching, but I'll try whatever I can anyway.

I assumed the WinHIIP step was because the source IMGC file is significantly smaller than the drive itself, so regardless of if it overwrote it or not, the rest of the drive would be formatted correctly, for the other programs I"ll be storing on it afterward.

Alright, I got it to work. I'm not sure how or why; I decided to try in one more computer (also Win10 64bit) before I dig out the T-32. So it wasn't any of the hardware or programs I was using. I'm inclined to think the problem lies in my Windows installation somewhere, maybe some other program I'm running is interfering; not sure (although software is more likely considering my Windows Explorer goes nuts after Raw Copy crashes).

Regardless, I only needed it for this one thing; but both of you have been very helpful, thanks for the advice! If I have any problems with data recovery in the future I'll be sure to return here.

@Naraise, would you mind indulging my curiosity by identifying your USB host controller and USB-IDE bridge?

You could use any of these tools:

http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/usb_devices_view.html
http://download.microsoft.com/download/e/b/a/eba1050f-a31d-436b-9281-92cdfeae4b45/UVCView.x64.exe
http://www.users.on.net/~fzabkar/USB_IDs/UVCView.x86.exe

I have a JMicron bridge that exhibits your observed symptoms when connected to an SiS host but works flawlessly when connected to an Intel host.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.