Sigh, another day, another bad disk... happens to the best of us, but when a disk is ruined, we need to find ways to recover the data. But wait, that's not the only problem, when I was copying the files, I noticed that some of the files had CRC errors, and the entire copy process was taking ages. That's when I remembered the 'xcopy' tool i heard about somewhere in school... thought i could use it..

So, here's what i found...

xcopy <source-dir> <destination-dir> <options>

Hmmmm, so what now? Now we copy the data....

xcopy "C:\backup\" "D:\" /c /s /h /i

where I need to copy from C:\backup to D: Here, the key aspect is the /c option, which skips the errors from the copy. Other options :

/s : recursively copy directories, useful for tux addicts :)
/h : fooled ya, this isn't help, this copies files with hidden and system attributes
/i : Treats destination as a directory.

Other useful options of xcopy :

/z : Copies over a network in restartable mode ... hmmm... interesting, never tried it...
/f : DIsplays source and destination file names

Now that I have the photos, I'm happy :D Let's get some sleep now...