I have two identical 2TB external hard drives. I regularly back up one with Seagate Toolkit and bought the second as an additional safeguard. Unfortunately, the drive containing the data has started showing folders as unreadable, and copying files produces a fatal device hardware error. Windows Disk Management still reports the disk as online with a healthy primary partition, and Seagate's diagnostic tool reports a passing self-test, but I suspect the drive is failing.
Some of the files, including important backups belonging to my wife, are not stored anywhere else because they are too large for my computer. Is there a safe way to recover or clone as much as possible onto the second drive? I'm comfortable with computers but have no Linux experience.
I tried creating a bootable Clonezilla USB with Rufus, but it failed with a "/vmlinuz not found; you need to load the kernel first" error. I also tried Ventoy with Rescuezilla, but booting Rescuezilla only brought me to a GRUB command screen instead of its graphical interface.
3 Answers
Before assuming the disk mechanism itself is dead, check the external enclosure, USB cable, and power supply. Some enclosures contain a normal SATA drive, while others have the USB circuitry built directly onto the drive. If it uses a removable SATA drive, connecting it directly to a desktop computer or using a known-good enclosure can reveal whether the enclosure is the real problem.
Do not run repairs, format it, or keep repeatedly opening and copying files if the data is important. The safest approach is to make a recovery image with a tool such as GNU ddrescue, which is designed to skip bad areas and revisit them later, then recover files from the image or clone rather than stressing the original. You will need another disk with enough free space for the image, not merely the amount of data currently visible.
Rescuezilla is easier than Clonezilla, but the boot problem may be caused by how the USB was created or by a UEFI/legacy boot mismatch. Ventoy can help, although changing the enclosure or connecting the drive directly is worth checking first.
Clonezilla is commonly recommended, but it is not especially friendly for a first-time Linux user and is not the best choice when the source has read errors. Use a recovery-focused environment with ddrescue, or have someone experienced create the image. Make sure the destination is at least as large as the entire 2TB source, because an image operates on the disk sectors, not just the folders that Windows can currently see.
A drive can still appear healthy in Disk Management and pass a short manufacturer diagnostic while having unreadable sectors or an intermittent connection. Those tools do not guarantee that every file can be read. Treat the disk as failing until proven otherwise: avoid CHKDSK, formatting, defragmenting, or any option that writes to the source drive.
If the files are irreplaceable and the drive is clicking, disconnecting, or getting worse, a professional data-recovery service is the safest option. Otherwise, make a sector-level image first and work from that copy. A normal drag-and-drop copy or a standard clone may stop at the first bad sector and can make the situation worse by repeatedly retrying the same area.
I tried Ventoy with Rescuezilla, but it stopped at a GRUB command screen before showing the graphical interface. I have not tried connecting the disk outside its enclosure yet.