"A disk read error occurred"

[donetao]

Hi carnage! I realize I'm a pest, but is my link OK and do you have a better one for the OP?
Would be nice to have a tutorial here on Techist about this topic!
Thanks!
Gary!

 

[carnageX]

The HTG article is fine as it approaches both from trying to get into via the GUI and failing that, mount the drive via the Terminal.

 

[donetao]

The HTG article is fine as it approaches both from trying to get into via the GUI and failing that, mount the drive via the Terminal.

Hi carnage! Lets hope the OP gets lucky and doesn't have to use the second option.
Thanks for your reply!

 

[Ausaris]

Alright, I just picked up a new HDD from staples, and i'm working on setting up a new bootable Ubuntu USB drive. Apparently my old one doesn't want to work anymore lol It goes as far as the Ubuntu splash screen, and just keeps trying to load without being able to go further.

I've been able to get the BIOS to pick up the old drive fairly consistently lately, so i'm hoping I will be able to clone it onto the new drive. Just in case that doesn't work out though, i'll be trying to pull off whatever files I can to minimize my loss.

Also, thank you for that link donetao, saved me the work of finding a good guide to work from

 

[carnageX]

Would definitely suggest trying to pull off individual files/folders first, before attempting a clone.

 

[1etherer]

Would definitely suggest trying to pull off individual files/folders first, before attempting a clone.

Yes I agree, I did recommend this in earlier posts, but maybe the OP never read..

 

[Ausaris]

Yes I agree, I did recommend this in earlier posts, but maybe the OP never read..

No worries, I did read your posts, but I had planned to pull off my files before attempting a clone anyway. I appreciate all the help you guys have given me on this.

I got Ubuntu up and running, and it picked up the HDD with no issues. I pulled off all the important files I could track down, and I actually have it working on cloning it to the new drive now. Although with the amount of used space I have on the old drive... I think it should take around 20 hours lol. Hopefully after waiting for so long, it will have actually worked.

Now to play some Banished on my laptop to kill time...

 

[carnageX]

Good luck, let us know how it turns out.

After you get it cloned over and verified it's working, you could format the old drive and run a chkdsk /f /r on it to find/repair bad sectors. If there's quite a few, then you could just use it as an extra or trash it. If it doesn't find much in bad sectors...then I suppose you could always use it as a storage drive.

 

[Ausaris]

Well, there was an interesting (frustrating) turn of events...

The cloning process finished, and once I saw that it had only copied 502GB (there was about 840GB used on the old drive), I knew it wasn't going to work. I decided to try and boot it up anyway, but it just gives me a black screen saying the drive cannot be booted and gives a generic list of possible reasons. Being ok with that, as I had expected it wouldn't work, I decided to put in my windows 7 installation disk and just do a clean install - but when I try, it almost immediately cancels it and starts spewing pop-ups saying "X" file/folder is corrupt or unreadable, so the installation was cancelled. I also tried doing a repair install, and it did the same thing.

Did trying to clone the old HDD somehow corrupt the new one? Is there a way for me to format the disk and get it to a state where I would be able to run a clean install?

I almost had an anxiety attack when I started seeing the word "corrupted" in all those pop-ups.

S.O.S. Please send help lol

 

[donetao]

Hi I'm sure other members will respond. What media are you using to do a clean install?
Are you trying to install windows on the defective HDD?? Did you disconnect the old HDD?
you have a new HDD and can't install Windows??