Other than the other thread, I also have a failed 3.5" HDD which is also making grinding sounds.
I assume I should buy another HDD and use the Astone Hard Drive Dual Bay Clone Dock Duplicator to do a PC-less clone?
You could do a clone or you could simply copy your data off to another location. Personally, my preference would be to try to move the data to another location. If the drive is already making grinding noise, I would want to spend as much time as possible actually getting the important data off and minimizing access to unnecessary areas of the disk.
Once you get your important off the failing drive, then you could try a clone if you really want an exact duplicate.
I would start with the most important data first. This is because, depending upon the nature of the problem, the problem may only get worse the more you access the drive, so getting the critical stuff off first should be a priority.
Absolutely NOT !! Do it manually with simple copy and paste from (faulty) drive to new destination drive. The overheads that 3rd party software use to verify and check data transfer might be all well and good under normal circumstance, but with a (possibly) failing drive, that extra "running" stress would only exacerbate the problems.
As above @hsehestedt, the manual option.
If you have a drive that you can no longer access and you somehow manage to actually clone it (doubtful), wouldn't you just end up with an inaccessible clone??
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