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Stop Windows 7 from disconnecting drive on read error?

I

IanWorthington

Senior member
Trying to copy what I can off a dying drive using Roadkill's Unstoppable Copier. Unfortunately Windows 7 has its own opinions about what to do when there's a read error and disconnects the drive.

Anyone know how to stop Windows from doing this?

Ian
 
Trying to copy data from a failing drive while within the Windows environment is a very poor practice. Windows is constantly parsing data on the disk and the more read/writes to the disk the less are your chances for successful recovery of the data. When working with a failing drive you should always perform any type of data copying or recovery efforts at the disk level, where Windows is completely deactivated. Download the free EaseUS Disk Copy Home Edition 2.3.1 and then use it to create their bootable CD to perform the copy operation with.

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That, or a live Linux distro (LXDE PCLinuxOS would be a nice easy one to try out).

You don't stop Windows from doing that; you use something other than Windows to copy the data. If you have a disk drive of the same size or larger, go ahead and look using (g)ddrescue, to get a copy to work from.
 
easeus disk copy doesn't work at the file level. I've got most stuff off already just want to do the best I can with the others.

Just had a quick look at ddrescue and not sure that it can work with ntfs files either, looks like it just images the sectors as well.
 
IanWorthington said:
Just had a quick look at ddrescue and not sure that it can work with ntfs files either, looks like it just images the sectors as well.
Click to expand...
Hence needing another disk drive of equal or larger size.

However, Linux will try to re-read much more than Windows, before giving up, if just browsing with GUI file managers and copying.
 
Actually Windows doesn't disconnect the drive on a read error, it is the drive going in to recovery mode and going unresponsive to windows. Sometimes you can use robocopy /w and /r switches to keep retrying in case the disk comes back.
 
imagoon said:
Actually Windows doesn't disconnect the drive on a read error, it is the drive going in to recovery mode and going unresponsive to windows. Sometimes you can use robocopy /w and /r switches to keep retrying in case the disk comes back.
Click to expand...
Were that the case, non-Windows OSes would behave the same way. Linux will keep trying, regardless of method, when dealing with file-level copying, sometimes for hours. Obviously not worth it for data considered priceless, but it can do miracles for best-efforts recovery, just by hammering away at it until the drive truly gives up.
 
Cerb said:
Were that the case, non-Windows OSes would behave the same way. Linux will keep trying, regardless of method, when dealing with file-level copying, sometimes for hours. Obviously not worth it for data considered priceless, but it can do miracles for best-efforts recovery, just by hammering away at it until the drive truly gives up.
Click to expand...

Windows behaves the same way. If the drive disappears after a read error, the controller on the drive gave up. Otherwise you can keep retrying the read.
 
imagoon said:
Windows behaves the same way. If the drive disappears after a read error, the controller on the drive gave up. Otherwise you can keep retrying the read.
Click to expand...
Windows behaves that way. Linux will generally keep waiting, as long as the drive is still visible to the disk controller. Windows will stop even if that was not the case, if it mere has to retry a few times.
 
Cerb said:
Windows behaves that way. Linux will generally keep waiting, as long as the drive is still visible to the disk controller. Windows will stop even if that was not the case, if it mere has to retry a few times.
Click to expand...

You an I are not using the same "Windows" then. I have seen robocopy sit there and try for hours to copy a failing drive without "disappearing on a read error" even listening to the drive stopping, clicking and restarting over and over again. What you are claiming simply isn't true. It only disappears when the controller decides to drop offline. Hell I have seen unreadable disks pop up and 0Bytes in size because the controller worked but something in the spindle was long since dead.
 
Last edited:
imagoon said:
You an I are not using the same "Windows" then.
Click to expand...
You are assuming using robocopy, I'm assuming plain old copy, xcopy, Explorer drag copy/paste or drag, etc.. Robocopy may very well keep going (but, if it's that bad, I just skip straight to imaging it).
 
Cerb said:
You are assuming using robocopy, I'm assuming plain old copy, xcopy, Explorer drag copy/paste or drag, etc.. Robocopy may very well keep going (but, if it's that bad, I just skip straight to imaging it).
Click to expand...

Not using robocopy/copy/drag/paste has zero to do with Windows... Robocopy is included with Windows Vista+ and was available for 2k and XP.
 
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