Question: I have a hard drive with important data on it. I have Spinrite running right now and it has located lots of bad sectors so its pretty much toast. I would like to image the drive and get as much data back as possible without copying over any bad sectors. What software would allow to do this?
Answer: Drive Snapshot will backup a hard drive and skip bad sectors (as well as recording them in a plain/text log file) automatically (it’s not an option that needs to be turned on):
Drive Snapshot http://www.drivesnapshot.de/
I’ve used this tool on many occasions to recover data from failing hard drives.
Now, for a note of caution: ?As far as data recovery is concerned, depending on the cause of the bad sectors, more usage can actually make the problem worse and result in more bad sectors developing. ?SpinRite is an excellent tool, and I highly recommend it because Steve Gibson is a top-notch programmer with a specialized understanding of the inner workings of hard drive technology, but before using a tool that exercises the drive more like SpinRite does may still be more risky without first having a backup (that is, getting a backup before attempting further recovery is usually a good way to reduce risk).