Replacing a hard drive with bad sectors by using a clone

[jmt356]

I have a hard drive with some bad sectors. They are less than 1 mb of bad sectors on a 250 GB hard drive, but are nonetheless bad and irreparable. I am considering purchasing a new hard drive, cloning the current hard drive to my external USB drive, swapping out my old hard drive for the new, and then restoring the clone to the new hard drive. However, I am concerned because some of the memory sectors on the old hard drive (and thus on the clone) are bad. Therefore, these bad sectors will be copied over to the clone and then eventually over to the new hard drive.

Is this a valid concern to have? If so, is there a way to copy over only the good sectors to the clone and from there onward to the new hard drive?

I don't mind if the bad sectors are in some data folder, files or program I hardly use. My concern is that they may be in some crucial system file that will prevent Windows from booting up, accessing the recovery file, etc. I don't want to copy over such bad files. But nor do I want to reinstall on the new hard drive Windows and my many, many other programs manually.

[StuartR]

If these are marked as bad sectors then this is not a genuine concern. Bad sectors are reserved by the operating system and do not contain any user data.

[jmt356]

This is what the Checkdisk log states (note the 96 kb in bad sectors noted on the fourth line from the bottom):

A disk check has been scheduled.
Windows will now check the disk.
Cleaning up minor inconsistencies on the drive.
Cleaning up 20 unused index entries from index $SII of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 20 unused index entries from index $SDH of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 20 unused security descriptors.
CHKDSK is verifying Usn Journal...
Usn Journal verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying file data (stage 4 of 5)...
Read failure with status 0xc000009c at offset 0x4ce48000 for 0x10000 bytes.
Read failure with status 0xc000009c at offset 0x4ce48000 for 0x1000 bytes.
Windows replaced bad clusters in file 74205
of name \PROGRA~1\AUTOCA~1\Sample\VBA\MAP2GL~1.DWF.
Read failure with status 0xc000009c at offset 0x4d4e9000 for 0x5000 bytes.
Read failure with status 0xc000009c at offset 0x4d4ea000 for 0x1000 bytes.
Windows replaced bad clusters in file 159027
of name \PROGRA~1\ROSETT~1\ARABIC~1\data\2a\5\2A5471~1.
File data verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying free space (stage 5 of 5)...
Free space verification is complete.
Adding 2 bad clusters to the Bad Clusters File.
CHKDSK discovered free space marked as allocated in the volume bitmap.
Windows has made corrections to the file system.

244196000 KB total disk space.
101169832 KB in 211019 files.
92516 KB in 18404 indexes.
96 KB in bad sectors.
308468 KB in use by the system.
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
142625088 KB available on disk.

[StuartR]

Every NTFS disk has a file called $Badclus to which all bad sectors are assigned, this prevents them from being used by real data

[jmt356]

Please let me provide context:

I ran the above Scandisk on ~ 14 March and then gave the computer to the Geek Squad on ~ 15 March and asked them to speed it up because the computer takes a long while to start up (with many unwanted programs loading at start up). On 16 March, they told me that the hard drive failed and recommended replacing it.

I said "how could this be? 96 kb of bad sectors doesn't sound so bad on a 250 GB hard drive." They said they ran stress tests by a program called Eurosoft PC-Check, a more thorough check than that of Scandisk, which I used.

Is there any merit to either of the following claims:

1. Geek Squad states that the reason the computer takes so long to start up is because the hard drive is failing. Please note: the computer runs fine once it starts up, so my suspicion is that it takes very long because so many programs load at start up.

2. Geek Squad states that I should not replace the hard drive by cloning it to an external USB and then restoring the clone to a new hard drive because the current hard drive “failed.” If I use the clone method, the new hard drive will experience problems. I must instead get the OS cds that came with the computer and manually install it, all of my other programs and settings and copy all of my files to the new hard drive. I find this difficult to believe because the hard drive, per the above scan disk, does not appear to be in such a dire state.

[jonwallace]

Please let me provide context:

I ran the above Scandisk on ~ 14 March and then gave the computer to the Geek Squad on ~ 15 March and asked them to speed it up because the computer takes a long while to start up (with many unwanted programs loading at start up). On 16 March, they told me that the hard drive failed and recommended replacing it.

I said "how could this be? 96 kb of bad sectors doesn't sound so bad on a 250 GB hard drive." They said they ran stress tests by a program called Eurosoft PC-Check, a more thorough check than that of Scandisk, which I used.

Is there any merit to either of the following claims:

1. Geek Squad states that the reason the computer takes so long to start up is because the hard drive is failing. Please note: the computer runs fine once it starts up, so my suspicion is that it takes very long because so many programs load at start up.

2. Geek Squad states that I should not replace the hard drive by cloning it to an external USB and then restoring the clone to a new hard drive because the current hard drive “failed.” If I use the clone method, the new hard drive will experience problems. I must instead get the OS cds that came with the computer and manually install it, all of my other programs and settings and copy all of my files to the new hard drive. I find this difficult to believe because the hard drive, per the above scan disk, does not appear to be in such a dire state.

Scandisk checks the state of the file system (somebody correct me if I'm wrong). The hardware should have its S.M.A.R.T. status checked with something like HDD-health (disclaimer - I've not used this).

My feeling is that if it is the filesystem that is really swiss-cheese bad (and 96 kb in bad sectors doesn't look too bad to me), then a bit-for-bit clone may just copy the errors over to the new drive. If, on the other hand, it's a hardware problem, then clone your drive over (fingers crossed that it survives the hard work), then run scandisk again on the new drive to iron out any glitches.