Bad blocks on Toshiba HDD & Win10 OS probs

And replace the old HDD with an SSD! Make sure you set the disk controller to AHCI mode in the BIOS regardless if you get an SSD or just another HDD.

1. That won't be a problem a new HDD is an allowed change. MS will have IDed your hardware.
2. You should have already done this.

You should have 2 Recovery drives one manufacturers one for the original OS and Toshiba stuff, and another Recovery drive you have made since, more up to date.....

You can also download Toshiba stuff and possibly drivers from Toshiba support, though they might not be all on there, most of my Toshiba stuff including drivers now comes via Windows updates.

You should also have Windows 10 install media from MS.

And do be aware that a reference to a drive could simply be a partition on the HDD, some will have drive letters assigned to partition and some will not in Disk Management. All HDDs need at least 1 partition for the OS, usually lettered as C:.

Wow. I hadn't noticed this thread spilled over to a 2nd page. Thanks everyone for the feedback on this

Samuria said:

Bad blocks can't be repaired so there is no point in testing your only option is to get a new drive and do a clean install don't even try to clone the disk it will either fail or copy bad blocks to new drive you also don't know what files have been corrupted

@Samuria You say don't even try to clone the drive Samuria. But I got feedback on the hddguru forums that suggested that Windows may be able to repair a corrupted OS that's been cloned to a 2nd drive. I'm probably just going to be picking up a 'cheap' 1TB SATA II 7200 RPM drive for $59 along with a $40 hardware HDD docking station / duplicator. I'd need a 2.5" USB drive enclosure anyway if I want to clone anyway. The docking station is capable of handing up to 4 drives, 2 2.5" and 2 3.5" HDDs. That'd be handy to have around for a number of reasons.

@Helmut As for drivers, when I upgraded my last Toshiba from Vista to Windows 7 I found as you mentioned that Windows supplied all that were needed. If not this time I'll have a look on the Toshiba support site. And oh! I just remember yesterday that I'd imaged this notebook when I 1st got it. It was the 1st time I'd used that particular imaging software that handles the new partitions Win10 creates, So I'm not sure if restoring it will succeed. Hope so.

@ArazelEternal @NavyLCDR A SSD or SSHD would be nice, but I really don't do much with the notebook that requires speed. It may be nice for transferring large files to another system. But none of the the drives on my other systems are very fast.

@Berton The only visable partition on this drive is C: But looking at it in GParted I noticed 2 or 3 others
and seem to recall mention of the ability of this notebook to reinstall Windows 10 again somehow.

@NavyLCDR AHCI is new to me. I'll look into that. Thanks.

There are a couple of other advantages to an SSD in a laptop besides just speed.

It consumes less power so your battery will last longet.

It is less susceptible to shock and movement damage.

NavyLCDR said:

There are a couple of other advantages to an SSD in a laptop besides just speed.

It consumes less power so your battery will last longet.

It is less susceptible to shock and movement damage.

Ah yes indeed @NavyLCDR Dropping it is the big one for me there. I'll be glad when the day comes when SSDs are as cheap as mechanical drives. I'm hoping to clone my 1TB, and those SSDs are pricey. One of the reasons I bought a bigger notebook last time was for the bigger battery.

Am back from the store with a $60 1TB SATA II 7200 RPM HGST HDD and a Sabrient dual drive docking / cloning device. There's nothing in its specs about cloning exact sector by sector copies though as someone at the store pointed out. I can return it and look for another if cloning fails though.

simrick said:

I have had some success cloning and recovering failing drives, but it is a bit complicated, to be successful. And, I was only going for data - not the entire OS. You might want to read this thread thoroughly:
Best method/tool for cloning a failing HDD for Data Recovery? Solved - Page 9 - Windows 7 Help Forums
.

They mention ddrescue in that 7 thread.. Folks over at hddguru suggested starting with either that or hddsuperclone to do an identical sector by sector clone for drives that exhibit evidence of hardware failure. I've just finished 2 & 1/2 hours of cloning the notebook's internal HDD minus all it's bad blocks to the new drive connected to the notebook via this Sabrent docking station, with the notebook booted into Linux Mint off an USB stick. So far so good.

Tomorrow I'll see if I can pull the Toshiba case apart, swap drives, run the Windows 10 installer from a flash drive, select the Repair option and see if the installer can repair the cloned copy of 10.

Someone also reminded me that Toshibas have a keyboard shortcut that can restore the notebook to its factory fresh software condition using system recovery I think from a hidden partition.

http://support.toshiba.com/sscontent?docId=98082971

That may be another option if the W10 installer can't repair the HDD clone.

Data recovery I've dealt with a bit in the past using various software. The "magical' one was Testdisk that was able to recover a deleted NTFS partition table from a backup few seem to be aware exists at the very end of the drive. I'd mistakenly deleted the drive's one primary partition with the wrong diskpart command. But after hours of deep scanning, Testdisk fixed the useless drive in a second by copying the backup table back to the beginning of the drive.