Raw Disk Copier

If a hard drive is malfunctioning, or if you simply want to replace it with another one, you’re going to need to copy all the stored data to the new device. To make the job easier, you can rely on a specialized utility.

Raw Disk Copier is one of your options, a small, portable utility that enables you to copy the entire contents of a drive to a new device, while also giving you the possibility of minimizing data loss when dealing with bad sectors.

The application is quite simple to use. Once launched, you will need to select the source and target disks from two drop-down lists, and then confirm the operation after clicking Start. Of course, it is worth remembering that all data on the target disk will be lost.

If you are dealing with a malfunctioning drive, which may have multiple bad sectors, it might be a good idea to enable the “Maximize data recovery” option. You may end up preserving more data, but the operation will also take longer.

Most cloning tools read multiple sectors at a time, and when a bad one is encountered, the read operation fails and all those sectors are skipped. If you are trying to recover as much data as possible, this is not ideal.

When the “Maximize data recovery” option is active, Raw Disk Copier attempts to read data from each of these sectors separately so as to ensure that only data from unrecoverable sectors is lost.

In addition to being very simple to use, this application requires no installation and can be launched from any location on your PC. It features a minimalistic UI, which novices should have no problems with.

In short, Raw Disk Copier is a simple but very useful drive cloning tool that can maximize the amount of data recovered from damaged devices. It is not the most feature-packed application of its kind, but it gets the job done.