My saga continues. In December I thought my main hard drive was failing. Good news is it wasn't that hard drive. My second 1.5 internal hard drive is the one that was failing - got this message:

"Notice - hard drive self monitoring has reported that a parmater has exceeded it's normal operating range. Dell recommends that you back up your data regularly - a parameter out of range may or may not indicate a potential hard (here there were no more words - but it seemed it was going to say "failure").

Dell had sent a technician out to replace the original hard drive under warranty. Once he discovered it was this second internal hard drive that was going bad, he took it out (as a courtesy - and put in a new 2TB WD black caviar drive - which I plan to use as the main drive - and maybe get it to dual-boot with Windows 7 and XP - but that decision will come after I save what I've got).

This 1.5 TB drive was under warranty by Western Digital and they sent me a replacement. I have 30 days (now 25 due to snow storm and power outage delays this week) - to return the bad drive. I'd like to retrieve the video files on there if I can. I have several ways (and drive mounting devises) to go about this and need advice.

I currently have a 500GB original hard drive - that doesn't have enough room for these videos. I have a second internal 2TB hard drive - that I don't want to use yet since I may set it up for dual booting with Windows 7 - and prefer to leave it blank until I get to that point). I have a 2TB external hard drive - with plenty of room.

I have a new hard drive enclosure (Vantec NexStar CX NST-300S2-BK 3.5-Inch SATA to USB 2.0 External Hard Drive Enclosure) and a new docking station (Thermaltake BlacX eSATA USB Docking Station). Both have esata connections so transfer will be faster. I think it would be easier to use the docking station.

Where should I place the drive that's going bad to copy files? Where should I place the recovered files? I'd like to just get the files on to the replacement 1.5TB drive. So I'm thinking I should take out the 2TB drive until I'm ready to use it (i.e., have a pro - and I may have found a good one who's not irritable and difficult to deal with - set up dual-booting with Windows 7 and XP). Put in the new 1.5TB drive. Format the new drive. Put the failing 1.5TB drive in the docking station. Then try to use Explorer (this is a question) to copy files from that failing drive to the new drive?

I think this method makes the most sense. But maybe there's an easier or better way. I don't know if I can put the failing drive in the docking station - and have the computer pull files off it to get onto the 2TB external hard drive.

I also have Acronis and don't know if it's better to copy/save the files with Acronis - or just going through Explorer. Explorer seems easier if there's no difference in effectiveness.

Another thought. When I thought the original drive was failing, I ran chkdsk overnight. It never occurred to me that it was the second drive that was failing - so I didn't run chkdsk on that drive. Can I/should I run chkdsk on that drive (can I run chkdsk if it's in the docking station). I was not having any functional problems with this drive - so if it is failing, I think it's not completely failed - and may just have a minor issue. Not sure if chkdsk makes sense. Also, Western Digital never suggested any of their diagnostics on this drive. Just sent a replacement. I'm not looking to do more than I have to - so if I should just try to copy files from this drive, that's fine.

Thanks.

Lynn.

PS - as a side note, before I could do any of this, we had a power outage. When power returned later in the week, turns out the external hard drive connected to our Tivo has failed. So this is the second WD hard drive to fail on me in 2 months (both just 1 1/2 years old). Is this a coincidence - or was WD having some quality control problems with drives sold around June 2009?