Microsoft Windows XP
Home Edition
Service pack 2
AMD Athlon 64 processor
3000+
1.81 ghz, 2 GB ram

I believe my main hard drive has been acting up for a while now, and I have purchased a second drive and it is installed. The second is used  as a back up using Norton Ghost.  Both have plenty of SPACE available, 200 and 300 GB.   

Lately, I have not been able to set a new restore point, (error stated that Symantec can't read 3576 sectors starting at LBA 505032 and that there was a data error - cyclic redundancy check), I still have an older restore point saved though, my files continue to be backed up OK, my system very intermittently reboots on its own, and games played are usually booted out after 10 minutes or so, and I have not been able to defrag my main drive for sometime now without having to restore the system as it completely locks up. I have defragged for months because of this issue.

What I want to do is now transfer all my systems and files to the back up hard drive and use this as the main boot and system drive. Then use my original drive as a restore and file back up drive. Basically swapping drives.

Question? - after I install windows to the new drive, using Norton Ghost, should I COPY the entire system over or RESTORE  it to the new drive. Also a menu question comes up asking whether I should ignore disc errors or not during the change over. If I ignore, will the current sector reading issues be copied over as well? Or is this software vs hardware issues.

SORRY about the mouthful but I wanted to make sure as much detail is included. Thanks all.             

Since no one has replied here yet, I will give what limited knowlege I have of this area;

If you clone the drive, you should be able to format and then reinstall.Using Norton Ghost, you should be able to make a copy (clone) and send it off to the other drive. So, I started this process, it asked me If I am sure as any data (my backups) on the new drive would be removed. I said OK, then part way through Ghost said it cannot complete the copy due to errors in the current drive. (which is why I want to move to another drive). So, I am now still using the current drive, BUT, I have lost all my back up data in the new drive. Plus now I cannot not even save into the new drive. The drive shows up in the BIOS, start up and system hardware menu, but it does not appear under the "My Computer" icon. When I try to move anything over to the new drive, I get a message stating it does not exist??!!     

I disconnected the new drive, booted up, shut down, reconnected, and re started, thinking it would recognize the drive as new hardware. No luck as no change occurred.     

So now I am really at a loss of what to do. Afraid if I crash again will lose all my setttings and will have to start over. I do have REALLY important stuff on a flash drive that works, so at least key files won't be lost.  I strongly suggest you do this:

Go to Start --> RUN and type chkdsk /f then click OK.
I agree with Carbon Dudeoxide. Run checkdisk first and than go to the manufacture of the drive and download the tools to check the drive.

How much data are we talking about? If the drive is bad already, cloning it will do you no good.

I would copy your files off it ASAP. Than get a new drive and do a fresh install of windows than copy your files back onto the new drive. Lastly, you can than setup ghost to clone the drive.



Carbondudeoxide and spoiler, thanks for the tips. I down loaded the analysis tools and it does show a failure on my primary drive.  The chkdisk does not show any failures, so there you have it.

I will now start backing up all info I need or want to keep, and start fresh with my new drive and reload all programs as before, then basically toss the old drive. 

Now, one last comment/question before I sign off for a while until I get things in order. This will be my third hard drive in about 7-8 years. Is this normal? My system is usually turned on about 7:30 am and shut down about 11:00 pm every single day of the year. Really not sure how much of a life I  should be GETTING out of a drive, some folks have told me this is normal where OTHERS are shocked I have gone through so many.  What are your guy's thoughts? 

Thanks again for your comments. Love this site, I am sure it has saved me a few hundred bucks and I have learned stuff in the process. Personally, I have only had one hard drive fail on my, but that hard drive was about 8 years old with Windows 98 on it.

As far as I know, it usually depends on how your computer is treated.
For example, don't kick it or knock it around too much.
Make sure it's defragmented.
Keep the hard drive space as FREE as you can.

 I have gone though about 4 hard drives in the last 8 years. One was a SCSI drive and the others were IDE. I leave my machines on 24/7 and kind of work them. The 3 IDE drives were on a FTP server with a lot of users.

If you defrag them and every now and than it helps in drive life. I run checkdisk about once a month just to be sure that things are working ok.

Again, thanks guys. I am using the SEA TOOL's  downloads to check and maybe repair the original drive.  We'll see what happens then, but first I am going to backup ALL of my files, as I may end up starting fresh on a new drive. YIKES and yuck.   

"If" I ever get back, will let you know how I made out.  I'm going in!All Right, Good Luck!