Replacing a BAD hard drive

[GinaMHewes]

Hello. I found your instructions for upgrading a hard drive incredibly informative, and I hope I can make use of them. My question is: Can I use these instructions to replace a hard drive that has a status of "BAD"? I don't know the exact nature of the problem with my current hard drive, but I am worried that the problem could get transferred somehow to a new hard drive during cloning - is that a legitimate concern?
Thanks,
Gina

[Rob]

I'd say the results are unpredictable, but it's not very likely that the cloned hard drive would not carry-over the problem in some fashion. It sounds like data has been lost to some extent. Cloning the hard drive won't restore the lost data. But if the old hard drive has a physical defect then cloning a new hard drive will put that issue to rest.