How to copy files from a corrupt HD and ignore all errors ?

[Fredeke]

Hello.

The drive I keep my movies and music on is dying. From bad sectors, I suppose, since filesystem repairs don't help at all.

I'm not trying to find out the nature of the problem : I just want to backup everything to a new drive !

Because of the nature of the files (audio and video streams), it's ok if some are corrupt: even in bad shape, they are still mostly playable.

However, no file manager that I could find would copy corrupt files. The copy always aborts when an error is encountered - which is like once in every 10th file, and always at the same point in those files.

What I need is a command or program that would batch copy all the files and just ignore errors - pad the unreadable parts with zeroes for all I care - or whatever quick and dirty solution, as long as it keeps copying without prompting me. (There are too many files for me to even confirm prompts.)

So, in short: I'm looking for a way to force copy corrupt files.

The choice of operating system doesn't matter, because I run all major three.

Any idea, anyone ?

 

[voyagerfan99]

Try using TeraCopy (the free version). It will copy files and skip over ones that are corrupt. It will take a while to copy, but it should work for you.

 

[Fredeke]

Thank you for your answer. I've been recommended Roadkill's Unstoppable Copier on another forum and it is backing up the drive right now. I thought I'd come back and share this solution with you.

 

[Hakerty]

Thank you for your answer. I've been recommended Roadkill's Unstoppable Copier on another forum and it is backing up the drive right now. I thought I'd come back and share this solution with you.

I used to use it , it works for me .

 

[JaredDM]

If you've got another blank drive of the same or larger size that you can use as a clone then you might consider ddrescue in Linux. It's one of the only programs designed to skip around bad sectors while reading as much good data as possible. It'll usually get 50% better results than any Windows copy/cloning tool will. Anything that runs Windows is subject to allowing Windows to handle the actual HDD accessing and Windows pretty much sucks at this. That's why the best cloning tools for handling bad sectors are all Linux based.

Here's a guide I posted a while back about using ddrescue to clone a drive with bad sectors: https://www.data-medics.com/forum/h...ive-with-bad-sectors-using-ddrescue-t133.html