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I believe my hard drive (let's call it C1) is dying: chkdsk /f on my C drive freezes/locks the process at a certain %. A few months ago I ran this process successfully and it found and fixed errors. FWIW, I have an SSD.

Fortunately, I can skip the process and still use my OS, but every other day it randomly locks up and I have to restart the computer by holding down the power button.

I plan to replace the hard drive (let's call the replacement drive C2), but is it safe to restore a Windows 10 recovery drive/system repair drive/system image that was created from C1's OS? If not, what's the proper way to get Windows 10 installed on this new SSD? I don't have physical access to another computer I can trust.

Daniel Kaplan
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1 Answers1

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is it safe to create a Windows 10 recovery drive/system repair drive/system image from it?

What's the point if the disk is almost dead ?

Even if I'm able to use it, wouldn't the result be corrupted? How would I know?

You can't know, so there is no point in even trying.

what's the best way to proceed?

Take a backup of your data asap. You might also take a backup image of the whole disk, just in case in the future you'll find that you forgot something (abandon if that backup will crash).

Get a new SSD, install Windows and all your applications and restore your data. Windows will be automatically enabled by digital entitlement (the fingerprint of your remaining hardware).

In short, do not trust what's on this disk, because a hidden corruption can become a time-bomb in the future. If you have a prior backup of your data, this is preferable to trusting this disk.

harrymc
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