Hard drive sending morse code messages

[Yogimus]

At about 500 words per minute. Also known as the "Final song of a drive", or "YoubetterfuckingreplacemebecauseIamabouttofuckingexplode in A minor".

So, dear adventurers, here is my problem:

I need to clone TWO hard drives, and have no idea how to do it. Any and all advice, at a "You're a fucking retard aren't you" learning level, would be greatly appreciated. My goal is to swap drives without fucking up my OS.

[Weetabix]

Take the hard drive or the whole box to someone who knows what they're doing and have them clone it.

Or wait for BobbyK to show up on this thread and tell you the secret link on the internets that will do it for you while you go drink a beer. He's done that for me a few times, and I'm pretty sure he's magic and can play the guitar like Eddie Van Halen.

[Yogimus]

trouble with professionals is that I have a LOOOOOOT of pornography on here. (All of it legal in the countries in which it was taken)

[Weetabix]

Find a kinky professional?

[Jered]

trouble with professionals is that I have a LOOOOOOT of pornography on here. (All of it legal in the countries in which it was taken)

Offer to share?

[Denis]

Get yourself a two-disk NAS box. Something like this:

http://www.dlink.com/be/nl/home-solutio ... -enclosure

They nearly always have an option in the setup menu of cloning one disk to another. Once you've cloned the data from the dying drive to a good one, you can replace it with another good one, and clone the clone. You also have a decent external storage device afterwards. You follow?

[BobbyK]

I'm going to assume that this is a desktop machine, otherwise we'll need to modify the game plan. The Scary Black Bag says:

First, download this and burn it to a CD: http://www.easeus.com/disk-copy/

Second, have one or more disks handy to replace the existing ones.

Turn the computer OFF.

Hook one of the new disks up with a SATA cable.

Boot from the disk you just burned.

Clone away.

Note: depending on how far gone your disks are, there may already be corruption to data and system files. So shit might not work when read from the cloned drive.

[evan price]

Used a program called Ghost last time I needed to do this; it was a while ago so there is probably something better by now.

[mekender]

I had to do similar to a failing OS drive on my server recently... I used the free trial of this:

http://www.macrium.com/

to do it.

Worked like a champ, I created an image on one of my spare drives as a image file, then the software imaged my new drive with the image.

I have to reverse the process now that I got a replacement drive via RMA.

[308Mike]

At about 500 words per minute. Also known as the "Final song of a drive", or "YoubetterfuckingreplacemebecauseIamabouttofuckingexplode in A minor".

So, dear adventurers, here is my problem:

I need to clone TWO hard drives, and have no idea how to do it. Any and all advice, at a "You're a fucking retard aren't you" learning level, would be greatly appreciated. My goal is to swap drives without fucking up my OS.

I have a video file of this drive operating when I start it up, but it probably sounds remarkably similar to what you're describing. Here's a photo of the drive after it had been cracked open to see what kind of damage had done to the platters:

IMG_3023 (Large).JPG

A little closer loot to the PHYSICAL DAMAGE to the platters from a drive when you can hear the heads slamming back and forth in the hard drive - WHIRR, CHONK, CHONK, CHONK, WHIRR, CHONK, CHONK, CHONK, WHIRR, CHONK, CHONK, CHONK, and THIS might be what you wind up with:

IMG_3039 (Large).JPG

I was able to get recoverable data off that drive even beyond what I thought possible (and yes, I HAVE recovered data from open-case drives, including SCSI drives which had frozen, and that was MUCH BETTER than having the drive heads doing something so destructive as what's in these photos).

Sure, you're likely to lose some data, but how much data matters a LOT depending on how well you take care of the drive and how quickly you can copy the data off it to a new drive. And yes, you CAN still copy data off such a drive even though the case is open. When you need to recover data, NOTHING is out of bounds (including attaching a HDD frozen to less than 0 degrees when trying to recover data from it - and I have SUCCESSFULLY done that too), IF you're able to get data back in the recovery efforts (but they also spoil/RUIN other professional data recovery attempts later on)!!

If you have a drive that's dying and you REALLY want to save the remaining data which you hadn't been able to through other means, DO NOT try other data recovery techniques or anything else unless you know what you're doing - or don't want to involve anyone else!! I don't tell ANYONE about freezing the HDD unless I know it's near the last resort - and even then, I usually only do it if I'm the one doing the freezing and drive access.

YMMV!!