[vox-tech] Imaging an XP Partition with Bad Sectors

[Kyle Oliveira]

Hey everybody,
I recently purchased a new 160 Gb Seagate harddrive to replace the old 80
Gb one that came with my laptop. I'm dual booting Windows XP and Mandriva
2007 and I'd like to move my Windows partition over to the new drive and
(shortly thereafter) add Ubuntu Hardy in the remaining space rather than
Mandriva (Ubuntu has really grown on me since someone on this list
suggested using Xubuntu on a really old laptop I was restoring).
The main reason for getting a new harddrive (besides filling up the old
one) was that I have a few bad sectors and it is about time to do something
about it. I tried using Ghost and Windows BDD to image the partition while
at work but both failed when they hit bad sectors. Now I'm trying partimage
running from a Hardy live CD and it's still tripping over the bad sectors.
I know an obvious solution would be to just go all linux, but that isn't
really feasible for me right now because of the requirements of my job and
education. Does anyone know of a way to get that Windows partition over to
the new drive intact, or am I going to have to give in, do a new XP install
on the new harddrive, and use the Windows Migration thingamabob to transfer
my files (and lose all my third-party software in the process)?
Any suggestions would be appreciated, I know this doesn't come up a lot.
Thanks,


Kyle Oliveira
Senior CS Major, UCD