How to Fix | Clonezilla Failed to Clone Bad Sectors
On a Windows forum, a user asked if running chkdsk could repair a hard drive with bad sectors that was causing Clonezilla to fail. Most answers suggested replacing the hard drive, but the user wanted to try to salvage their old drive. This article will explore the possibility of cloning a hard drive with bad sectors, providing a solution for those who want to continue using their old drive.
Why Hard Drives Get Bad Sectors?
A hard disk is made up of many small storage spaces called clusters, which are made up of one or more sectors. The number of clusters depends on the file system of the hard drive. When there are bad sectors on the hard drive, they stop responding to read or write requests.
Bad sectors on a hard drive or solid-state drive can be categorized into two types: physical (hard) and logical (soft). Physical bad sectors occur due to physical damage, such as a damaged hard drive head, dust accumulation on a specific sector, or wear and tear on a solid-state drive's flash memory unit, resulting in permanent damage. In contrast, logical bad sectors are software-related issues that can be fixed, often due to logical errors, corrupted data, or other software-related problems.
The soft bad sector appears when the operating system tries to read data from the sector and finds a mismatch between the error-correcting code (ECC) and the sector's contents.
If your hard drive has bad sectors, you can try to repair it if they're soft, but if they're hard, it's best to replace the drive. If the bad sectors are soft, you can try overwriting the drive with zeros or performing a format to repair it.
If your cloned hard drive won't boot, there are three fixes you can try. First, ensure that the cloned drive is set as the primary boot device in your computer's BIOS settings. Next, if the cloned drive is not recognized by your computer, try booting from a live Linux USB drive and then copy the boot files from the original drive to the cloned drive.
If your cloned hard drive or SSD won't boot, this page provides practical solutions to make the cloned drive bootable on Windows. The issue may arise due to various reasons, including differences in disk geometry, boot sector corruption, or incorrect boot order.
How to Fix Clonezilla Failed to Clone Bad Sectors?
If you're having trouble cloning a disk with bad sectors using Clonezilla, you can try ignoring the bad sectors and continuing the cloning process. However, if that doesn't work, you may want to consider using an alternative disk cloning software like Qiling Disk Copy instead.
Qiling Disk Copy is a software that specializes in disk cloning, allowing users to upgrade their HDD to SSD, transfer their OS to an SSD without reinstalling Windows, and clone their hard drive to a USB drive, among other uses.
Here, Qiling Disk Copy helps you clone a hard drive with bad sectors by skipping the bad sectors and reading your content as much as possible. To do this, download and install Qiling Disk Copy, and follow the guide to clone a hard drive with bad sectors.
Step 1. Download, install and run Qiling Disk Copy on your PC.
To clone a hard drive, click on the "Disk clone" option and select the hard drive that you want to copy or clone. Then, click on the "Next" button to proceed.
Step 2. Select the destination disk.
Note: If you want to copy or clone a hard disk, the destination disk should be at least as large as the source disk. Ideally, it should be larger to account for any potential data growth or fragmentation.
Step 3. Check and edit the disk layout.
If your destination disk is an SSD drive, be sure to check the option that indicates the target is an SSD.
Step 4. Click "Proceed" to start the hard drive cloning process.
Confirm the deletion of data on the destination disk by clicking "OK" and select the "Sector by sector copy" option if the destination disk has bad sectors.
Final Thoughts
If Clonezilla fails to clone a hard drive with bad sectors, it's essential to determine the type of bad sectors. If they're hard bad sectors, it's best to replace the hard drive. However, if they're soft bad sectors, you can try cloning the drive with Qiling Disk Copy, but success is not guaranteed and depends on the severity of the sector damage.
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