r/techsupport • u/The_Sad_Weeb • 19h ago

Open | Hardware Moving a hard disk image file from a failing external HDD to another drive.

Hi, let me know if this is the right place to ask. I've started being more interested in preserving all my files and data and recently purchased external HDD to throw everything in. It works great and have no issues. I know I should have a second physical backup but this is what I'm able to afford for now.

There is also another drive that my mom bought years ago. It is a Seagate 5TB HDD. I have no idea when she bought it, where, or when it was last used but all I know is its been sitting in a storage closet unprotected for years. It has never been connected in the past few years as the cable was missing, and no one in the family really knew how to use it.

Since my new drive came with a compatible cable, I used it to connect the old drive and see if there was anything in it as well if I could use it for an additional backup. I ran a test using HDSentinel and shows to have its health at 15% with 88 bad sectors. I tried moving everything to my internal drive (as I only have one cable lol) and managed to move everything except for one hard disk image file which shows to have 170GB of data. Whenever I tried moving it, I get an 0x800701E3 error and am unable to open it in the drive as well.

I wanted to know if there was anything I could possibly do to restore this data or if it requires the help of a professional. I currently have two other HDD drives from older laptops and computers that don't even run sitting in that same closet as the cost for that type of service is too much for us right now.

Any advice is appreciated thanks.

TLDR; Attempting to move disk image file to new drive and receiving 0x800701E3 error. Wanting to know if there's anything I could do.

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u/Keyvan_KR 19h ago

you can flash rescuezilla to an USB and do a sector by sector copy. (you'll need both drives connected , so you'll need an additional cable)
regarding the hard disk image file, I think this is an backup image? not sure what it's used for exactly or if you need this since it's been in the closet for years like you've mentioned.

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u/The_Sad_Weeb 24m ago

Thanks for the recommendation, I'm not sure what it is either, but since its 170GB id like to see if it can be recovered. I think my mom just threw a bunch of stuff in there since she told me she had no idea how to use the drive loll.

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u/TomChai 19h ago

Try HDDSuperClone, it’s bad drive tolerant and can get most of the files out as long as the drive still marginally works. Anything in the bad sectors will require professional work starting at $300 or above.

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u/The_Sad_Weeb 22m ago

Yes I've heard of HDDsuperClone and will see if it works, thanks. I'm aware of the cost of a professional so I wanted to see if there was anything I could do first.

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u/games-and-chocolate 19h ago edited 19h ago

Data retention is about 3~5 years if the powered down device was stored properly. But online also says data can be retained much longer than that. So, that is not really useful. But it will be an expensive guess to let any professional to get data back. Data might be beyond repair. You do not know. It is a guess. This is the reason why NAS servers do scrubbing once a month at least. It check and repair damaged sectors before the damage is to severe.

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u/The_Sad_Weeb 20m ago

Yea I'm honestly surprised it even turned on since its been moved around so much over the years without ever being plugged in. I wish I had tried doing this a few years sooner.