cant clone over bad sectors....need Help Please.

[Tom]

Is there any way to figgure out where the 'college stuff' would be and somehow get that into a fresh install of win7?

No. The only way to deal with this is to attempt a clone. If the clone doesn't work out you can try creating an image with iRecover, or try iRecover directly on the disk. That is, if the disk isn't normally accessible anymore (not sure about that, has that been tried? not booting from it, but just accessing it as it is now, by connecting it as a secondary disk).

Booting from a disk that has read problems is an extremely bad idea. In fact, doing anything that may change something on that disk is a bad idea.

Given the state of this disk you should try the biggest possible skip-size for the cloning.

[DukeB]

I booted from the bad disc, tried a user file back up without the image, and win7 wouldn't do it. I tried creating just an image in win7....and it woudn't do that either. Tried Diskpatch clone at max skip......it didn't show any blocks skipped (which I don't get), or write errors (I am assuming that is because we're talking about the fresh disc there?) THat froze at 1.2% at sector 7352320. As for the unit the drives are in....it's an amd 890 chipset with a 6 core processor. I don't think that is to blame. I have an i7 2600k unit.....would that make any difference? As for the irecover....I am already several hundred dollars into this adventure......and if windows wouldn't do it....there is the chance that your software wont either. I know you can't gaurantee that it will.....but your best guesstimate?

[Tom]

I booted from the bad disc

Now what did we say about this...

and if windows wouldn't do it....there is the chance that your software wont either

That is a completely incorrect assumption.

or write errors

If write errors show up during cloning, that would mean that the target disk is bad. Cloning is FROM (reading) the problem disk TO (writing) a good disk. So if the TO bit is not working you might as well stop. So no write errors is not only good, it's mandatory. I would think that to be a bit obvious.

You could try a clone, starting further down the disk. If you are looking for specific bits of data (instead of having to rescue the entire disk) you may get lucky and manage to clone something salvageable. Use your best judgement to select a start area: if the cloning halts at 1.2% (as you say) then start a clone at 10% and see what happens. It's entirely possible that the bad bits are clustered together at the start of the disk. If cloning from 10% goes well you can try to clone the bit before that, piece by piece.
Afterwards you can scan the clone with iRecover, if cloning in steps went ok.

[DukeB]

So where is starts at 0, enter...say.....10000000, which puts is just after where it stopped last time....or go further?

[Tom]

I'd go way further. I gave a valid example.