external hard drive analysis

[generalaxes]

i need a bit of feed back on this one.
i recently got a new external and am trying to copy my old to new hard drive.
here is my issue. all of a sudden my old hard drive is randomly becoming "unreadable".
recuva could not read the drive- said it was not readable said it was not formatted.
then i used sea tools.
after passing the long test everything on the hard drive came back!!
here is the kicker- as i am trying to copy it over (drag and drop) it failed again.
currently i have everything working and readable.
how do you suggest i get it copied over, considering...
thanks

i have xp sp3, this is only an external with typical stuff, movies, music, pics, etc.

 

[Osiris]

Sounds like its on its way out the door and its becoming a hit a miss. My suggestion is to keep trying, folder by folder, moving many folders at once it will probably fail and then you might lose data if you cut the data or you might have half the folder in one place and half in another, may get large chunks of corrupt data, then you will need to search where the hard drive stopped copying files over.

Some people even put the drives in the freezer for a while and they work longer, depending on how badly damaged it is I'm assuming.

 

[generalaxes]

always a great help.
thank you!
in the freezer it goes.
how about norton ghost?
would that be any help here, just restore the back up on the new hard drive?
in the mean while i will do one at a time when i take it out of the freezer.

 

[Osiris]

So you are asking if you can use Ghost on the old drive and then ghost it to the new drive?

 

[generalaxes]

So you are asking if you can use Ghost on the old drive and then ghost it to the new drive?

correct.

 

[Osiris]

Well Im not going to say yes or no because anything can happen, its data and Im sure its valuable and its worth a try