Cloning a failing disk (Win 7)

Posted by daveh551 on Super User See other posts from Super User or by daveh551
Published on 2012-06-01T14:10:15Z Indexed on 2012/06/01 16:44 UTC
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I have a Windows 7 machine with several partitions on a 1.5T drive. Windows has been complaining about disk errors and imminent failure, so I have purchased a new 2TB drive.

The failing disk has not completely failed, and, in fact, I was able to boot Windows from it (after a couple tries) and examine the SMART logs - the only RED item was 1 sector being reallocated. But when I try to Clone it to the new Drive using Acronis True Image Home (2010), True Image can see the drive, the partitions, and the contents, but when it goes to actually do the clone, it says "Failed to move. Make sure the destination disk is not smaller than the source disk, and that there are not errors on the disk" (or something like that).

What are some other options for simply cloning the failing drive. I'd like to clone the entire disk, but am willing to do it partition by partition if necessary. Was this a known failing of the 2010 edition of ATI, or is it really something hosed in my system. Would upgrading to the 2012 edition be likely to work any better? (I'd download the trial and try it out, but if I remember right, the cloning operation is disabled in the trial version), and I don't have enough free disk space to make an entire image.)

What are some other cloning software packages if ATI won't work? Note that I'm only looking to clone the disk, not make an image as a back up - I use Ghost for that, and can fall back to that if I have to. It looks to me like CloneZilla would do the job. Any recommendations?

Thanks, and if this duplicates other questions, I apologize.

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