Steenamaroo
...
That's great but corrupt or damaged files may just be a symptom.
The hard drive may still be failing.
The hard drive may still be failing.
Locked up this morning when I left Firefox running for 45 minutes or so while I went out to the store. No issue since. The corrupt files all seem to be Windows O/S-associated. Unfortunately (as is always the case these days wiht new computers), it didn't come with any Win discs. The backup is all on the partitioned hard drive (typical HP set up). Around here a basic 'lookie' (no guarantee of fix) is $80 or more, I don't have any computer geek friends to do it for free.
From Jimmy's comments, cloning onto a new HD probably would not fix anything at all, I'd just be copying the corrupt stuff over. Obviously I'm trying to avoid Win 10.
You need to know for certain the hard drive is NOT dying.
I know there are some folks here considerably more ept (as opposed to me be inept) about computers. All signs are that my HD (1Tb, currently about 620Gb filled) is failing - browsers (any of them) lock up with no warning, usually all I can do is a cold reboot to fix things. Ran checkdisk a couple of times, it found a couple of bad indexes the first time. Running Win 7.
So, before I lose everything ... will back up the few new photo folders and recording folders I haven't backed up recently.
I have 3 USB drives including a powered LaCie with backup software.
How do I (exact step-by-step) do an 'image file' of my hard drive (onto a USB drive, obviously) and then copy it to a new hard drive? Could I use an external SS drive for this, so I wouldn't have to pull the old hard drive, or is that not an option? If there is a website that gives step-by-step on this, please point me to it. Everything I search out when looking to debug the problems seems to be aimed at IT pros. I'd like to be able to just swap hard drives and continue my usual work, rather than have to start again and download software, drivers etc.
Go to XXCLONE, A New Way of Cloning the Windows System Disk. Free software that will allow you to make an exact copy of your current drive. The destination drive must be as big or bigger as
your current drive. I've used it 6 or 7 times when I've purchased larger drives. You don't have to reinstall the operating system or any programs you are using.
Check it out!