How to Clone A Failed Hard Drive to An External Hard Drive?

Quick Navigation:

• 1. Why We Need to Clone Failed Hard Drive?
• 2. Failed Hard Drive Cloning Preparations
• 3. Clone A Failed Hard Drive with DoYourClone
• 4. Tips to Avoid Hard Drive Failure and Data Loss
• 5. Conclusion

After years of use, the disk may become overrun with corrupted system files, faulty sectors, and meaningless garbage data. Also, file system damaged, sudden power off, or other issues would cause the drive failing. By that time, the hard drive would experience a wide range of issues, the most common of which is the dreaded "hard drive failing."

Failing hard drives have poor stability, making it impossible to save or transfer data to a Windows computer reliably. It may even keep going up and down in a never-ending cycle. It could just stop working or fail to boot up. A Windows system disk on a failing hard drive could prevent the computer from starting.

Therefore, if your PC's hard drive fails, clone it immediately to prevent catastrophic data loss and booting issues. This article will show you how to clone a failed hard drive on PC with reliable drive cloning software.

Why We Need to Clone Failed Hard Drive?

A computer's hard disk serves the same purpose as the other storage media discussed above. It is also utilized for Windows booting if the operating system is installed on the drive. After extensive use, your hard drive will experience problems like damaged sectors. In each case, the "hard drive failing" theme predominates.

Here are the reasons to clone a failed hard drive on PC:

• Data Recovery: If a hard drive starts to fail or shows signs of failure (like slow read/write, clicking noises, etc.), cloning it helps create an exact replica of the data before it becomes completely inaccessible. This ensures that valuable data such as documents, photos, software, and system files can be saved.
• Minimize Downtime: In business or personal scenarios, losing access to data can lead to significant downtime. Cloning the failed drive allows the system to be restored quickly without the need to reinstall everything from scratch.
• Preserve System Configuration: For systems that have custom configurations, cloning ensures that not only the data but also the operating system and software setups are preserved. This can save a lot of time compared to reinstalling the OS and all applications.
• Ensure Data Integrity: Cloning captures the exact state of the failing drive, preventing further degradation during the recovery process. Once cloned, the original drive can be analyzed and repaired without risking the loss of critical data.
• Migrating to a New Drive: If the hard drive is at the point of no return, cloning it to a new hard drive helps seamlessly transfer the system to the new hardware. This is especially helpful in case of mechanical failure that renders the original drive unusable.

In short, cloning a failed hard drive is a safety measure to secure data and avoid potential loss or costly recovery operations.

A failing hard disk will disrupt your work and make it difficult to complete tasks. The disk may be inaccessible even to you at times. How can you retrieve necessary information from the hard drive in this situation? Worse, you might be unable to boot your computer if the failing hard drive is the disk on which Windows is installed. That's enough to drive anyone insane. Therefore, if you have a failing hard drive in your computer, cloning it is an absolute necessity from any angle.

Failed Hard Drive Cloning Preparations:

What must be done beforehand in Windows 11/10 to clone a failed hard drive to an external one? The following tasks must be completed in advance to successfully clone a failing hard drive to an external hard drive.

1. HDD/SSD, get ready to go external

Close the case of your desktop PC and turn it off. The SATA connector is then used to link the SSD/HDD to the computer. A portable computer's user can immediately connect an external hard drive.

2. Initialize and format the new HDD/SSD

Once the system has restarted:

• To access Disk Management, go to Computer Management in the menu bar. The Initialize Disk option is now available.
• Choose the disk and partition method (MBR or GPT).
• To finish setting up, select OK from the menu. In addition, a fresh disk volume must be made.

3. A Windows disk cloning software

If your internal hard disk fails, clone it to a new one on an external drive to ensure you never lose any data. Using trustworthy disk clone software can help you save your data during a disaster. You should use DoYourClone if you value your time. It can successfully clone data from a non-working hard disk onto a working one.

With the software, you can easily create an exact copy for your entire hard drive or partition. It's a perfect way to create a full backup by cloning drive with the software.

What's more, the software can be used to migrate your system drive. It can clone all system files, along with settings, installed applications and all your personal files on the system drive. In this way, it can guarantee the cloned drive is bootable. It can help upgrade system drive without reinstalling OS and software.

4. Ensure the power supply

It's necessary to ensure the power cord is connected when you are using laptop. It may take a long time to clone failed drive so ensure the power supply is stable. Otherwise, it would cause the clone process interrupted.

Clone A Failed Hard Drive with DoYourClone

After getting everything ready, including the disk copy software, external drive, power cord, and so on, you can then start to clone the failed hard drive to another external hard drive with disk cloning tool.

DoYourClone is an easy-to-use disk cloning program. It supports to clone a failed hard drive on Windows and Mac. First of all download and install it on your computer.

Connect the external hard drive to the computer and then follow the steps below to clone the failed hard drive to an external hard drive.

Step 1. Open DoYourClone on your computer, and then select the failed disk as the source disk and select the external hard drive as the destination disk. Click Next.

Step 2. Then check the clone layout, you can choose just copy existing data from the failed hard drive to the external hard drive. Then click on Clone button.

Step 3. The software will start to clone all data from your failed drive to the new drive. It will take some time depending on the size of the failed drive. If there are bad sectors or other problems on the failed drive, it will also take a long time to finish the cloning process.

Once the failed drive is cloned to the external drive completely, the software will show the information, you can then access the cloned drive and check if all the files are cloned and open normally.

Also, If the failed drive is a system drive, you can check if the cloned drive is still bootable. Here is how: Restart the PC and enter BIOS, find the settings to change the cloned external hard drive as boot drive. Save the configurations and reboot. If the clone is complete, the computer should be able to boot from the cloned drive normally.

Tips to Avoid Hard Drive Failure and Data Loss

To avoid the problem and keep your data safe in the future, it's better to do as following tips:

1. Always shut down the computer normally. Don't cut down the power directly to turn off the machine.

2. Regularly check the disk errors. Especially if the hard drive is used for a long time, it's necessary to check and confirm the status of the disk is still good or not.

3. Back up your files to different places. You can back up the files to another drive or cloud regularly. If the drive is failed, you still have the files safe.

4. When buying a hard drive, ensure to check and choose the one from trusted company. Bad quality hard drive would be failed quickly.

5. If you find there are issues with the hard drive, stop using it to avoid further damaged. Then immediately back up the files or clone the drive to a new one for data security.

Conclusion:

Can a broken hard disk be cloned these days? It's conditional on the circumstances. The disk cannot be copied if the computer can not identify it due to serious damage. However, cloning is still an option if the computer can read the damaged hard disk.

It may be difficult to clone a hard drive that has been physically damaged, but DoYourClone can be used to clone a hard disk that has just suffered cosmetic damage. Cloning a hard disk with this utility is risk-free and can help customers keep their data intact.