Temporarily relocate Windows to the HDD
Temporarily relocate Windows to the HDD
This indicates your boot drive is damaged or corrupted beyond repair, making recovery difficult for consumers. Using Clonezilla's --rescue feature can help salvage data without needing advanced tools or a professional lab. At this stage, Corsair likely has limited options except for hiring a data recovery service. If you don’t have a backup plan, consider restoring the drive from your disc image as part of your routine backup process.
Consider Macrium Reflect rather than a simple cloning tool. Visualize your system instead of making copies, which helps you recover the image more efficiently and keeps backups in place. Check the forum's search feature—it has many discussions on this topic.
I hadn't realized there was an in-built imaging feature in Windows until now, though I think it might have similar problems. Should I give it a shot? Or will it just copy all the damaged files? I've used FreeFileSync, as it's the only one that somewhat works, but it misses many files because of errors. It's strange how Windows seems to function perfectly unless I try something like imaging, then it throws errors. Also, during startup the BIOS complains about drive failure. Apart from that, everything appears normal. Perhaps the file system or something deeper is damaged, but the files themselves are intact? I've used Macrium Reflect before and it had the same issue—drive is corrupted, it can't read it, etc.
If you have access to your files, you can install Windows on a second drive, keep the same username and computer name from the previous setup, and use a third operating system to copy or overwrite all important system and user files while preserving their attributes (using the proper settings in Directory Opus – free for 60 days). This approach requires three drives: an old SSD, an old HDD, and any bootable Windows installation on the third drive for the copying process. You won’t be able to copy certain critical files like the registry or user settings when switching between source and destination OS. It’s a complex method, so you should have experience with operating systems and configuring programs, but it is achievable.
It looks like you're planning a bit of a gamble here. I checked with Corsair, but they haven't replied yet. If you don't hear back in a few days, you might go ahead and try it.
Follow the instructions carefully to complete the task. Confirm that the process will replicate everything exactly as it appeared on the previous drive.
Do you have a third, functional operating system ready to use? This allows you to link extra hard drives. I've already described the steps. It's quite challenging, I admit. The "Preserve attributes" feature in Opus configuration is available for copying files.
Preferences > File Operations > Copy Attributes. You can keep owner, attributes, turn off permission changes, etc. Run Opus with admin rights. Then you can copy folders such as Windows, Users, Program Files, etc. If asked, replace everything. Remember to include hidden files. You might also use the Synchronize option to skip identical files (based on date or size) which can speed up the process. You know, it’s still a copy, so just verify yourself—there’s nothing to lose. You could even wipe the entire SSD and copy from an SSD to see if it works. I did this once just to test functionality on an older system.