Does restoring a Windows image to a new hard drive copy all the errors

Does restoring a Windows image to a new hard drive copy all the errors of the failing hard drive? I was at my local pc store for him to change over my hard drive. But he said it was Windows 10 that was the problem and to factory reset my PC. I think him seeing it was an HP, put him off. So I never took his advice and took NavyLcdr's and installed my new hard drive myself. So I am just curious to see if this is true or not?

Good question.

There is a lot of error correction at work (parity and bit and checksums for example) that are able to mathematically correct errors up to a certain point on any disk. If a disk has bad physical sectors and the data in that sector is not readable and yet ends up in a backup image then I would say yes, the image will also have corrupt data. In this case it is just the data that is corrupt (the wrong 1's and 0's) and not the actual disk holding the data that is the problem. So if it were a user file affected then it may be of no consequence, you could replace the file, picture or whatever. If it was a vital part of the operating system then you could have problems. It might be possible to repair the restored image by using the various tools available within in Windows and from MS to identify and overwrite the corrupt information.

I think the bottom line is that if the system you image is giving problems due to a failing HDD (rather than just corrupt data) then you are going to run into problems in trying to clone that image to a new HDD.

Thank you I thought the hard drive would not let the bad sectors in. Now I know what to do in future thank you.

Error correction and multiple re-tries may have got the correct data off the failing disk. For the rest, sfc/scannow should be able to repair damaged files. If that too fails an in-place repair install may do the job, at least as far as the Windows system is concerned.
Repair Install Windows 10 with an In-place Upgrade

Bree said:

Error correction and multiple re-tries may have got the correct data off the failing disk. For the rest, sfc/scannow should be able to repair damaged files. If that too fails an in-place repair install may do the job, at least as far as the Windows system is concerned.
Repair Install Windows 10 with an In-place Upgrade

I just installed the new hard drive and fresh install of Windows 10 Pro this time. As I wasn't taking the chance just checking on here to see if what he said was true. An off subject question now if you don't mind is there a way to have text and pictures downloaded in the Windows mail app instead of having to click a link to download them?

Yes, cloning carries any errors over along with other characteristics such as fragmentation and so on. You are simply copying the 1's and 0's from one disc to another.