Disk Cloning vs. New Hard Disk

[jovypinoy]

Hi everyone,

We encounter a problem from the server last week. It makes a beep sound then shutdown automatically. I figure out the the heat sink was not fit properly. It looks like loosen from the motherboard. While the motherboard was on repair. I tried to slave our SATA Seagate Hard Disk 80GB to my computer just to get some important files on it. It makes a clicking noise and I noticed that it is not spinning. I'm worried that our server's hard disk was crashed.

When the motherboard repaired. We tried immediately the hard disk and fortunately it works so fine. It loads the Server and also the network configuration.

They adviced us to replace the hard disk because there's a bad sector on it. They give us two options.

1. Disk Cloning - copy all the contents of the old hard disk to a new one. no OS installation, no network configuration but it is not 100% that all data will be copied.

2. Purchase a new hard disk - Copy all the files manually. Manually config network configuration, manually install OS. Easier to troubleshoot because of step by step procedure.

What do you think guys?? Please help..

Thank you so much and God Bless

Jovy of Philippines

[lasitha2005d]

Clone the disk and try. Check the error log for any occurrences of errors or warnings.
If you could analyze the disk using a error recovery program (software level - I do not recommend using low level utilities since it will corrupt your entire disk) and locate the sector. If its not part of the used section, you will have no problems.
If the machine still boots properly without blue screens that means you still have a chance of cloning. Make sure that you have no hard encryption and security settings applied to those files. Otherwise cloning may not become successful.
Avoid over heating situations as well. Use Acronis or Ghost Enterprise suite. Do not use home editions
Cheers!