hard drive going bad

[charlescpc]

I think my hard drive is going bad. I run some different programs and hear a "clunk" and then everything is all froze up.

So, I'm thinking about getting a good backup just in case. I have a second hard disk I can clear and use for a backup disk. It's smaller but should hold everything.

Question what's a good program to use that will get everything like hidden files. I did a practice run using xcopy but some of the files didn't copy got an access error of some sort.

[ScorpioIlya]

PowerQuest Drive Image 2002, is something I've used successfully, to clone a failing hard drive onto another one....all I had to do was run fdisk /mbr afterwards and win2k booted up just fine ........it even works if the drives are different sizes, u'll just have a partition that's smaller than the whole drive, which you can resize later...

[mongo69]

I think my hard drive is going bad. I run some different programs and hear a "clunk" and then everything is all froze up.

So, I'm thinking about getting a good backup just in case. I have a second hard disk I can clear and use for a backup disk. It's smaller but should hold everything.

Question what's a good program to use that will get everything like hidden files. I did a practice run using xcopy but some of the files didn't copy got an access error of some sort.

I have used powerquests DriveImage before with alot of luck in an industrial environment but the only problem I have had with it was that for some reason when I imaged a drive everything would work fine but M$ Word would be corrupted and would not work. Nothing I did would fix it either. Now I use Norton ghost it is the best in my opinion.

[TripleRLtd]

Another vote for Ghost, although depending on the particulars, it may not ghost to a smaller drive.
PS
HDD clunking? You better do this real quick.

[Cyphrr]

Norton Ghost all the way. It will copy to a smaller drive as long as the data size is smaller than the destination drive.

[charlescpc]

Thanks for the info.

I will try and get one that's shareware or free first since I'll probably have only use it one time..

I have to check to see if Norton ghost has a demo that will work.

I looked at several shareware but they want both drives to be the same size.
I can use one that doesnt use all the drive space and reformat it later.

Yea, I heard the computer make a clunk once, but it did it with the same program ( converting dvds to mpeg so I could take em in to work and watch em there). But, I've just heard it again with a different program so the clock's ticking on the drive.
Thanks guys....