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Solve : finishing a hard-drive recovery process?

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Greetings All!
Brand new member here. Please forgive etiquette errors while I get used to this forum. I'll be as brief as I can laying out my problem.

YES, I KNEW BETTER than to not back up my hard drive, so please don't blast me for not overcoming my ADD with disciplined backup. Of course, hints for backup will be welcome after I get everything running.

I have a Toshiba A65 using XP.

So I sent my dead internal hard drive to a lab for recovery. They had to rebuild the heads &/or bearings twice to get to the data but they indicated a 99.99% recovery. They sent my original hard drive back in working order (for how long I don't know) and a new hard drive with the old one "cloned" onto it, but not guaranteed to boot. It didn't boot. I tried directly accessing the new drive (in an external housing) from another computer. I seems to be a near-perfect copy of my original drive, but I can't access anything under my user name presumably because of my original boot-up password.

I put my original drive in the laptop and it booted and "seems" perfect, but I know it is running on borrowed time. I removed the boot password for now. I decided to copy as much as possible onto my Passport drive starting with "My Documents". This was working until it choked on paths that were too long. Breaking down the file structure so it will copy and then rebuilding it will take unreasonable time. I know I need to operate the drive as little as possible to have the best chances of getting everything so I am unsure how to proceed.

I decided that if I can get a good copy of my original hard drive somewhere I'll try using the Toshiba restore disk to make the new hard drive bootable while preserving the rest of the cloned image. The people at the recovery lab suspected hidden Toshiba files did not make the transfer &/or their uniqueness on the original drive made them unusable on the new drive. Still, I have the concern that the restore disk might not work or might proceed into a format process beyond my control.

I've read about the XCOPY command. I think it might work but my research leaves me with 2 questions. The lesser question is "assuming adequate space, will XCOPY copy the entire drive, structure intact, to a named folder on my passport drive?" The other issue relates to the long-path-name issue. During my info-search I saw a lot of comments about XCOPY choking on long file and path names.

I hope I've made my problem clear without excess verbage. If you can advise me how to proceed I would appreciate it. If this is so complex it needs a live conversation and you are such a wonderful and generous person that you would talk me through, email me or post your email address and I'll send you my phone number.

Thanks in advance to everyone who reads this.

Sincerely,
install4you in north-central Alabama I may be wrong, but possibly the difficulty in accessing the cloned data on the new drive might be down to OWNERSHIP issues? Have you tried taking ownership? Was it an NTFS volume?


Please forgive my ignorance, but how do I take ownership? I'm not sure about NTFS. My problem would still remain in wanting a secure total backup before attempting to restore bootability on the new hard drive.

Is there a utility that can copy a whole drive with its structure intact into a named folder an another drive? ...even if the folders in folders in folders (etc.) create long path names?

Thankshttp://support.microsoft.com/kb/308421Thanks. That looks doable. I'll reinstall the drive in the external housing and give that a try as soon as I can. I'll report back what works.

That still leaves me with the copy problem. I won't try to make the new hard drive bootable until I know I have a full copy of everything on a reliable drive.Use Robocopy not xcopy. It can handle network interruptions, retains file attributes and timestamps, and it can copy file and folder names exceeding 256 characters.Quote from: Uselesscamper on August 28, 2011, 05:13:06 PM

Use Robocopy not xcopy.

As I understand it, Robocopy is not available in XP. Am I missing something?Robocopy, or "Robust File Copy", is a command-line directory replication command. It has been available as part of the Windows Resource Kit starting with Windows NT 4.0, and was introduced as a standard feature of Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008.
You can download and install Windows Resource Kit to XP.
http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=17657
Quote from: Uselesscamper on August 28, 2011, 06:59:54 PM
You can download and install Windows Resource Kit to XP.

The link you posted specifies that one system requirement is Windows Server 2003 family. What I have is stand-alone XP Home. Should that still work?Yes it will work on XP. I kind of mentioned that in the previous post. Quote from: Salmon Trout on August 27, 2011, 12:42:24 PM
... Have you tried taking ownership? ...

I followed the link provided and it was helpful. I followed the steps to take ownership of the entire folder under my user ID (previously inaccessible). After the computer spent a long time making the changes I was able to fully access everything including My Documents. So I set out to copy everything to another drive for back-up. I decided to copy the smaller folders first and then I could walk away while larger items were copying.

Here's where BIG TROUBLE started. As I COPIED files & folders (drag/drop) I encountered the same kind of or similar "access denied" messages as before, this time with files & folders previously & still readable. "Naturally" I took ownership of those items so I could copy them. I think it while taking ownership of a "Windows" folder when the ENTIRE DIRECTORY STRUCTURE WAS CORRUPTED! This was, of course, before I copied any of My Documents.

This reinforces the truism "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing!"

Fortunately, my original drive is running. I've been backing it up but it is a slow process. I know I have My Documents and everything else is gravy.

I'm planning to finish backing up and then do a full restore from the Toshiba CD on the new drive I bought from the recovery lab. The most tedious part of that will be the 5 years of Microsoft updates and service packs that will have to be installed on the new drive. Yes I know I should buy a new computer but after paying for the hard-drive recovery I can't do that right now. I have my original software disks to reload. I'll pull IE favorites from the original drive or a backup. And etc....

ANY SUGGESTIONS to ease the Microsoft updates issue?

Thanks in advance for any assistance!Of course, a user does not have the facilities to do what a Technician would do....having said that.

I would slave that little HD off of my desktop PC, with appropriate adapters and access it with my own OS.
That's also a good time to scan it for Viruses, Trojans and Spyware.

Then I would access all the desired files and copy them to my own HD, from where I could burn them to CD's or DVD's for a PERMANENT record. I regularly do this for my customers.

Now as for that Toshiba recovery CD..... it's an exact copy of the hard drive as it was when it came out of the Toshiba factory.
If you run it, everything on your drive will be gone and the PC will be just like new again.
I'd use that only on the new drive and NOT on the old one that has all your data on it.
The only one of those recovery CD's that I've ever used, was actually made with "Ghost", my favorite backup program.

Good Luck,

Oooops! Double post!
Quote from: TheShadow on September 05, 2011, 12:03:09 PM
Of course, a user does not have the facilities to do what a Technician would do....having said that.

I'm fortunate that the recovery lab was so busy they didn't take the parts back out of my old drive per their normal process. So far it is running great, although I know that's just the drive trying to lull me into a false sense of security. I'm convinced that inanimate objects grow brains and work consciously against us. If I back up well it will run forever. If not it will fail as soon as it uniquely holds my most critical files. I've been copying everything from it to my WD Passport drive.

When I'm confident I have sufficient backup, I'll store the old drive in a fire safe and run the Toshiba disk on the new drive. I was under the impression that there were some options with its use. I had hoped to back up the new drive and then try to restore the boot function only. Oh well...no matter...I'll let the restore disk do a total job on the new drive and then start the rest of the rebuild.Quote from: install4you on August 27, 2011, 01:44:49 PM
Please forgive my ignorance, but how do I take ownership? I'm not sure about NTFS. My problem would still remain in wanting a secure total backup before attempting to restore bootability on the new hard drive.

Is there a utility that can copy a whole drive with its structure intact into a named folder an another drive? ...even if the folders in folders in folders (etc.) create long path names?

Thanks
I highly recommend TODO backup.
it can copy your whole drive or specific file. Besides COPING, it can do schedule backup set, incremental backup, differential backup. Differential/Incremental backup and automatic backup.


http://www.todo-backup.com/products/home/free-backup-software.htm


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