Computer i am working on HD has died. C: drive riddled with bad sectors, unable to copy some files off as cannot read from device. Some others i cam, like the recovery partition seems to be all in tact. Can i clone that partition or copy those recovery files onto another HD and run the recovery from that? Or is there another way?

How did you conclude that the drive has died -- Did you run a manufacturer's diagnostic utility on the HDD? If in fact the disk is severely defective, your best bet is to limit any type of access to the disk until you install a replacement. Once you've installed a new disk in its place, you can then try to clone the disk. And even then, the recovery partition may not be as intact ... but it is worth a shot. Jabbering Idiots: Everywhere You Look!

Hello Sub , What clone did you have in mind something like Unstoppable Copier from stubs I haven't had to try it myself . but I would say it's worth a try , let us know how you got on .

sorry Sabertooth It's not only that I'm a slow typist but also the kettle was boiling , Subs you have a Dell they often put Seagate HDDs in their machines If you have a Seagate HDD then they have a tool that runs from a floppy or bootable CD and this , as Sabertooth says , can repair your disk with minimal loss of data . the tool is called Seatools for dos CD version I have down loaded it and it runs well on my Dell , It will scan drives but only repair seagate\maxtor drives ,

The drive is a samsung, i used the samsung disc diagnostics ultiy, it passed all but surface scan. I used r-studio to copy recovery partition and data files off c drive. some it couldn't get, read error. i have hiren boot cd, i was gonna use one of the disc clones on there.

You have hiren boot cd , Well there is as a lot of choice on that disc , i use Acronis 11 , Acronis 10 with a vista patch will work but i doubt that the version 8 on hiren will , what ever you choose a visit to google to see if your choice is compatible with vista might be a good idea .