Copying off a (possibly) bad disk?

Defiant · Post by **Defiant** » Wed Jan 05, 2005 7:15 pm

So today I decided to copy the contents of an old (~6+ year) drive I had stored some time ago. After connecting it up and booting the machine, I can see the drive and it's contents, but when I try to access/copy files, sometimes it freezes up. Is there a way to either:

Copy the entire contents of the disk, good and bad, and then sort out whatevers corrupted later?

Or

Copy just the contents that are ok, without having to go through each file individually (and take forever)?

Thanks

Rip · Post by **Rip** » Wed Jan 05, 2005 8:12 pm

Give spinrite a whirl.

http://www.grc.com/intro.htm

I've been able to recover lots of lost data with it.

Jeff V · Post by **Jeff V** » Fri Jan 07, 2005 9:31 am

Is it the same files, or different ones each time? You might have a mechanical problem that gets worse when the drive heats up.

Try putting the drive in your freezer overnight (serious). Immediately hook it up right out of the freezer, and see if you have better luck getting all of your data off before it warms up.

The Meal · Post by **The Meal** » Fri Jan 07, 2005 9:59 am

Jeff V wrote:Try putting the drive in your freezer overnight (serious). Immediately hook it up right out of the freezer, and see if you have better luck getting all of your data off before it warms up.

Just don't let any water condense on the PCBA. If you're going to take this advice, be sure to 1. put the bag in a water-tight ziplock bag, and 2. do so in a non-humid enviornment before placing it into the freezer. Similarly be very careful about static charge when monkeying around with your now cold drive.

FWIW, I doubt that a six-year downtime on the drive has induced a mechanical problem that would be operationally temperature dependent. Temperature definitely affects certain types of mechanical issues, but they tend to be of a different variety of problem than the drive "freezing up."

I've had plenty of success manually moving files off of drives which will no longer boot up (not exactly your problem, but possibly similar).

Best of luck,
~Neal

Defiant · Post by **Defiant** » Sat Jan 08, 2005 12:10 am

Rip wrote:Give spinrite a whirl.

http://www.grc.com/intro.htm

I've been able to recover lots of lost data with it.

Thanks, although that's a bit more than I'm willing to spend to try to recover game saves, old email and possibly some old games who's original disks are no longer good, or which would be a pain to reinstall. (though, oddly, I've had many a 5.25 floppy disks last more than 10+ years - longer than this drive)

Jeff V wrote:Is it the same files, or different ones each time?

Seems to be the same files each time.

I did manage to find a couple of freeware programs that do somewhat what I want them to do, although they're very very slow so I'll need to find a time when I can devote my computer to copying files for a day or two.

Copy It Anyway

CD Check which is free for personal usage.