Ignore CRC Errors to Copy Damaged Files

As I type this, I am watching a new addition to my utilities toolkit copy damaged files from a hard drive with several bad sectors that is about to be replaced.

Trying to use most programs, like a basic drag and drop in Windows Explorer, or Robocopy, or XCOPY (remember that!) will fail when the filesystem kicks up a CRC error on the file.  I’ve also had this happen with scratched CD’s and DVD’s.

The new in my software toolbox is Unstoppable Copier, a freeware tool available here. I’ve tested it once, and it seems to work as advertised. It did more than Windows Explorer managed to do, at least.

There are also roundabout ways to do this with disk image software that can ignore errors – such as ddrescue – which I’ll be running on this same hard disk soon.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 19th, 2012 at 10:06 pm and is filed under technical support, tools. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

5 Responses to “Ignore CRC Errors to Copy Damaged Files”

  1. Anonymous Says:
    December 23rd, 2012 at 2:21 pm

    The link does not work. Where is the utility tool?

  2. leonard Says:
    December 23rd, 2012 at 2:27 pm

    Whoops. That’s a funny cut and paste error. The link has been fixed. Unstoppable Copier is from http://www.roadkil.net

  3. kevin Says:
    April 10th, 2014 at 5:43 am

    robocopy c:\ d:\ /MIR /R:0 /W:0

    /MIR = Mirror entire directory structure (can use /E instead)
    /R:0 = 0 retries for read/write failures
    /W:0 = 0 seconds between retries

  4. Dustin Says:
    August 8th, 2016 at 12:38 pm

    Thanks for the Unstoppable Copy tool. I have a 15 GB Outlook PST file I use for archival. The disk it was on went bad and I couldn’t find anything that would copy it over. Using your tool and the Outlook repair tool I was able to recover some of that data

  5. MartiniGM Says:
    December 1st, 2017 at 11:55 am

    Excellent copier…