Windows 10: Does restoring a Windows image to a new hard drive copy all the errors

Does restoring a Windows image to a new hard drive copy all the errors of the failing hard drive? I was at my local pc store for him to change over my hard drive. But he said it was Windows 10 that was the problem and to factory reset my PC. I think him seeing it was an HP, put him off. So I never took his advice and took NavyLcdr's and installed my new hard drive myself. So I am just curious to see if this is true or not?

:)

 

Installing Windows 10 on a new hard drive

Installing Windows 10 on new hard drive. Recovering content of old hard drive.

1. Save a system image backup on external hard drive.

2. Make a USB recovery drive.

I mount the SSD and boot from the recovery drive and select Advanced options > system image recovery and I get this error message.

System image restore failed, can't restore system image to computer with different firmware. Image was created on computer using BIOS and this Computer is using EFI.

I cannot get Windows 10 operating system and all my files installed on the new hard drive.

 

restoring windows 10 on a new hard drive without a disc

Hi,

A product key is a 25-character code that's used to activate Windows. In most cases, Windows 10 activates automatically using a digital license and doesn’t require you to enter a product key.

To resolve your concern about reinstalling Windows 10 on a new hard drive, follow the steps provided on the article
Reactivating Windows 10 after a hardware change. You can also check
Andre Da Costa’s response on this link for more options
about your concern.

Let us know how it goes.

***If you think this was helpful, don't hesitate to "mark it as an answer" to help those who are facing the same problem.***

 

Good question.

There is a lot of error correction at work (parity and bit and checksums for example) that are able to mathematically correct errors up to a certain point on any disk. If a disk has bad physical sectors and the data in that sector is not readable and yet ends up in a backup image then I would say yes, the image will also have corrupt data. In this case it is just the data that is corrupt (the wrong 1's and 0's) and not the actual disk holding the data that is the problem. So if it were a user file affected then it may be of no consequence, you could replace the file, picture or whatever. If it was a vital part of the operating system then you could have problems. It might be possible to repair the restored image by using the various tools available within in Windows and from MS to identify and overwrite the corrupt information.

I think the bottom line is that if the system you image is giving problems due to a failing HDD (rather than just corrupt data) then you are going to run into problems in trying to clone that image to a new HDD.

 

Thank you I thought the hard drive would not let the bad sectors in. Now I know what to do in future thank you.

 

Error correction and multiple re-tries may have got the correct data off the failing disk. For the rest, sfc/scannow should be able to repair damaged files. If that too fails an in-place repair install may do the job, at least as far as the Windows system is concerned.
Repair Install Windows 10 with an In-place Upgrade

 

I just installed the new hard drive and fresh install of Windows 10 Pro this time. As I wasn't taking the chance just checking on here to see if what he said was true. An off subject question now if you don't mind is there a way to have text and pictures downloaded in the Windows mail app instead of having to click a link to download them?

 

If there are problems with Windows operations, for example, let's say several shortcuts no longer work for whatever reason (be it registry or whatever), cloning also "moves" those errors from source to target.

 

Yes, cloning carries any errors over along with other characteristics such as fragmentation and so on. You are simply copying the 1's and 0's from one disc to another.