[prosun21]

So I am in need of some help...

The other day I was playing a game and BAM!!! I get hit with the "Blue Screen Of Death" and my computer restarts by itself...

After the system boots back up I get a message from windows that "A Disk Error has occurred" with my SATA HD and that it is recommended that I back up my system and either run a repair or replace my HD.

So I went ahead and backed up my system on an external HD, and I ran a Scan Disk check to see what was going on... it comes back that there is an error in sector 6 of my SATA HD, and windows was unable to fix it.

So has anyone ever backed up their HD, go buy a new one, and restore everything on to the new HD? I've never had to do this before so I am just trying to get some kind of info before I go buy a new Internal SATA.

I still have all the OS software and original software that came with my PC when I bought it.

Thanks
Prosun

[Oen386]

What did you back up to the HD?

If you buy a new drive, I would suggest a fresh install and put a virus scanner on. Not to say you have a virus for sure, but often times that can be an issue, and if you want to take the time to do a fresh install you want to make sure none of your old files are infected.

I have had to restore a few hard drives, I normally back up all my files from the failing drive to a temporary one. Then I keep that dying drive on hand while I setup a new drive and transfer all my files on to it. I use it for a week to see if I notice anything missing, if so I try to recover from the failing drive. If I don't notice anything missing the drive goes into box until I throw it away, or realize I need it in a month.

[prosun21]

Oen386 said:

What did you back up to the HD?

If you buy a new drive, I would suggest a fresh install and put a virus scanner on. Not to say you have a virus for sure, but often times that can be an issue, and if you want to take the time to do a fresh install you want to make sure none of your old files are infected.

I have had to restore a few hard drives, I normally back up all my files from the failing drive to a temporary one. Then I keep that dying drive on hand while I setup a new drive and transfer all my files on to it. I use it for a week to see if I notice anything missing, if so I try to recover from the failing drive. If I don't notice anything missing the drive goes into box until I throw it away, or realize I need it in a month.

Thank Oen for the information...

I did do a back up of my files on an External Maxor HD that I use to save music/movies etc... I had some extra space so I just threw it on there... I did it through the "backup system" through Windows.

So, if I did buy a new SATA HD, I understand it's mostly like a plug n play type of deal, is that correct? One I plug in the new HD and start up the computer will it prompt me for the OS software and etc? Which I do have all the separate discs from DELL with the original pre-installed software and etc.

[cyb.tachyon]

Pretty much. However, you won't be prompted for the OS, you'll need to insert the OS CD/DVD and make sure to boot from it.
As long as you're installing the same version of windows, the usual backup feature should work fine. Once the OS has been installed on the new drive, run the backup tool and restore.

If it's a newer PC (not a lappy) with a motherboard that supports RAID 0/1/0+1 then you might want to consider buying two or more identical hard disks and using RAID Striping. RAID Striping cuts down on load times by a surprising bit, the only disadvantage being that if one hard disk dies they all die (never had that happen, been RAIDing my disks together since they first had RAID in mobos).

Good luck!

[sizors]

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