is there a faster way to copy my files from a dying drive?

[Savage_Smithy]

My 1TB hard drive has pretty much had it, SMART errors and the other day it decided it was a 32MB RAW disk. I have now got it working again and got a replacement caviar black. the problem now is i want to transfer a lot of files from the dying disk to the new one but simply copying them from windows isnt an option because some files simply will not be read properly and it will freeze up the entire transfer. the only other way is to copy 1000's of files one at a time and then skip the ones that wont copy, most of the time i have to restart windows explorer to stop it trying to copy the file.

So is there a utility that can copy the files for me and automatically skip over the ones that cause issues?

thanks,
smithy

 

[Snortan]

Not sure if it will work but you could try Total Commander to copy/move the files and when it can't copy/move a file it should give you some options (skip, skip all, cancel and retry) select skip all and it should skip all files that it can't access/use and copy the rest.

 

[Savage_Smithy]

Not sure if it will work but you could try Total Commander to copy/move the files and when it can't copy/move a file it should give you some options (skip, skip all, cancel and retry) select skip all and it should skip all files that it can't access/use and copy the rest.

thanks for the reply and i have just tried this but i dont think its gonna work for me, the option seems to be to skip over the files that cannot be read. my problem is the files can be read and then suddenly it stops. say for example it is a video file, it will play perfectly fine up until a certain point and then it will freeze, same with copying the files. its like it just looses track of the file, looks for it forever and never finds it so it just freezes, i cant even cancel the copy because it wont close unless i force quit and restart explorer.

 

[Antony1995]

I've been in this same situation myself in the past, i got around it by downloading the Linux Ubuntu live CD and booting into that and then coping all the files from the dying drive. I've had to do this a few times now and managed to get all the files off the drive including the corrupt/damaged ones, but as soon as you try and use them damaged files windows will sure enough let you know and you can sort them out.

This might work for you I've had success with this method, if you give it ago let me know the outcome

Antony

 

[Savage_Smithy]

I've been in this same situation myself in the past, i got around it by downloading the Linux Ubuntu live CD and booting into that and then coping all the files from the dying drive. I've had to do this a few times now and managed to get all the files off the drive including the corrupt/damaged ones, but as soon as you try and use them damaged files windows will sure enough let you know and you can sort them out.

This might work for you I've had success with this method, if you give it ago let me know the outcome

Antony

i did end up going down the linux route, i'm typing this froma live boot of knoppix and its doing a great job of skipping over the damaged files it seems the file manager on linux is just leaps and bounds better than windows explorer.