Raw Disk Copier : Copy Data From Failing Hard Drives

Electronics devices are susceptible to electrical or mechanical failure just like all the other machines. This also includes the hard disk drives which are favored by many users because of their long life. A hard disk drive can last you a life time if you are lucky. But another hard disk drive can stop working in  a few months. There are so many factors involved but we can also say that it was just bad luck.

This is why if you notice that your hard disk drive has become slow, the files are becoming corrupt, and file system is behaving unusually, then you should run scan disk tool on your hard drive. And if you find a bad sector, it is time to copy your data from your old hard disk drive to a brand new hard drive or solid state drive.

The problem that arises when copying data from a failing hard disk drive with bad sectors, can be handled using an open-source free tool called Raw Disk Copier. As the name suggests, it bypasses the regular Windows File Explorer copy functions and uses special algorithm to copy files directly from the source to the destination drive.

Raw Disk Copier

Windows File Explorer copies many sectors at the same time, and this is why the copy operation fails. What this tool does is that it reads one sector at a time and writes the data to the destination drive. Because of this strategy, all the data is copied to the destination drive except the data store in the bad sectors.

Because of this method, the copying process could be a little slower but it ensures smooth data copying without any interruption. The time taken depends on the number of bad sectors on the source drive (failing drive).

You can download Raw Disk Copier from https://github.com/TalAloni/RawDiskCopier.