Read errors on source partition
A partition and disk imaging/cloning program
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steven_shiau
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I have Dell Inspiron 6400 with 120GB HD, split to 2 partitions, first NTFS 80GB bootable XP pro SP3.
I created USB stick with clonezilla live, and started cloning first partition to external USB disc 320GB (beginer mode, saveparts).
After reading about 45GB of source disk, read errors appeared and seemed to never stop.
After 2 hours, I stopped cloning.
Then I started expert mode with option "Ignore read errors…" but it was the same…
I tried all options, and the only one that finished is using ntfsclone with ignore read errors.
1. Now, how can I be sure that restoring of such image will pass?
Of course, I have created backup of my important files, but I don't like to reinstall xp and mess again with M$ trying to activate it…
2. I ran all MS tools to check my HD for bad sectors, and all report it's clean. My xp works fine and never reported any problem with HD. How come that clonezilla finds tons of errors ??? How can I check is there really bad sectors (and buy new drive), or it is just fake alarm of clonezilla ?
"1. Now, how can I be sure that restoring of such image will pass?" -> You can only restore that so you will know if it works or not…
"2. I ran all MS tools to check my HD for bad sectors, and all report it's clean. My xp works fine and never reported any problem with HD. How come that clonezilla finds tons of errors ??? How can I check is there really bad sectors (and buy new drive), or it is just fake alarm of clonezilla ? " -> Maybe it's false alarm… Maybe it's kernel/hardware support issue… It's not easy to judge here…
There is a command "badblocks" in Clonezilla live, so you might be able to try that.
Steven.
Thank you for your answer.
Can you give some info how can I use command "badblocks" in Clonezilla live?
I selected shell, cd /opt/drbl/sbin and tried to start clonezilla with -badblocks parameter but it doesn't work. There is no such executable in that directory, and no any help with keyword "badblocks"….
Hi:
badblocks can be run (non-destructively) as its own function. As root just #badblocks /dev/sd(x) (sd(x) must be made to agree with your #fdisk -l output for you specific hard drive. Cheers…
Robert
I ran badblocks /dev/sda1 and it listed series of numbers like 41954069, 41954070…
I guess those are bad blocks. Now what should I do? Is there any (I prefer open source) tool to analyze
those blocks (are they empty or have data….) and to evetually heal them? I already used some free disk scanners
like Ariolic but they didn't find any read error.
Bad blocks are hardware problem… so there is no way software can heal that. One possibility is you can mark the bad blocks for OS so that it will skip that. However, it's recommended to do so, since the hard drive might be dead very soon… The best solution is to buy a new one to replace that.
Steven.