Windows 10: imminent (critical) HDD failure- possible fix!? For opinion

Hi all, generally hard to revive failing(critical) /failed HDD. was given a hitachi 1tb disk- message- imminent failure. ran crystal disc and SMART - agreed result- critical-(bad/unreadable sector count at max ). also 9yrs old!! no backup! running cmd(admin) or PowerShell chkdsk/f or similar doesn't help here.

have tried a few ideas.. then loaded a copy of Active @boot ( LSoft technologies), used disc explorer and managed to see what was in the dying HDD after a few tries. ( 1% life left) found the personal files my friend wanted taken off by using explore/open and did copy/paste to my PC hard drive C :/ . appears to work, I used a local build tower, running W10 pro ,64 bit ,i7 ( EDSYS company) with 500G HDD . opened up side panel and did direct cable link to dying HDD using spare SATA and pwr cable from M/Board -as doing it externally via USB doesn't have enough punch to work properly on the 1 tb.


normally I might also try SFC/verify only or cloning, or one of the recovery programs . opinion seems to vary on if those bad sectors get left behind during clone , logically it should as they are marked unreadable. trouble is if enough loss is caused by all those unreadable files/sectors , could lead to unreadable programs, boot, apps, etc in the good HD...



try it- no guarantees.

love to hear thoughts .

MG.

:)

 

Possible HDD imminent failure & whether or not to clone


Computer:
HP Pavilion a1600n Win10 desktop (Originally XP Media Center, upgraded to Win7, upgraded to Win10)
SAMSUNG SP2004C [Hard drive] (200.05 GB) Free space: 154.91 GB
8/30/16 during boot: Hard drive disk failure is imminent. Insert system disk & press Enter.
There isn’t a system disk.
Not that I expected it to work but I connected a Win10 USB recovery drive. Pressed enter: nothing.
Removed the Win10 USB recovery drive.
Another not expected to work item, I pressed CTRL-ALT-DEL, pressed Enter.
The computer restarted and booted into Windows without any problems and the system ran fine.
I ran Belarc and the hard drive SMART status report is Healthy.
I checked out whether or not to run error checking.
It reported you don’t need to scan this drive. We haven’t found any errors on this drive. You can still scan the drive for errors if you want.
So I left well enough alone. The computer belongs to a friend and I told him to use the computer and if the computer reports the Hard drive disk failure is imminent again even only once to call me.

I have an ST3160318AS [Hard drive] (160.04 GB) he can have.
It’s from my desktop computer with upgraded Win10 Pro on it which originally had Win7 Pro.
It ran fine - I replaced it with an SSD.

Since my friends computer is running fine again, I’d like to clone his 200 GB HDD to my 160 GB HDD if it isn’t illegal to do so. I have Belarc’s reported Win 10 key for each system.
--- If that’s possible to do, what external adapters do I need to clone to the 160 GB HDD and just keep it ready in case his hard drive does crash?
--- I plan on using MRF to do the clone.

 

Possible HDD imminent failure & whether or not to clone


"...Hard drive disk failure is imminent.." I'm probably chasing a rabbit down the wrong hole, however, I wonder if the failure is "logical", software caused, rather than hardware caused. I had a similar un-exciting "logical" failure that was remedied by copying off everything [full imaging], Un-allocating the entire HD, re-partitioning it, restoring the saved full images [of "c drive" and "d drive"].

 

unlock hdd

Hi Johan,

It is possible that your
HDD was unreadable
causing the error message to appear. We recommend that you perform these troubleshooting steps and check if there are any changes:

• 
  Shutdown
  your
  PC.
  
• 
  Unhooked
  the
  HDD
  and
  turn on
  your
  PC.
  
• 
  Reconnect
  your
  HDD
  and
  restart
  your
  PC.
  

If the issue persists, we suggest that you contact your
laptop/computer's manufacturer
for further assistance.

Update us on how it goes.

Regards.