windows - Transfer disk contents *without* cloning tools

Is it possible to "clone" a disk which contains programs by performing a copy of all the disk contents (preserving file attributes) from source to destination disk, and unplugging the source disk and changing the drive letter of the destination disk to match that of the source?

Context

I have a two disk Windows 8 system with a system drive and a data drive. Recently, the data drive developed a number of bad sectors leading to IO errors. I have been sent a replacement drive so I simply need to clone the contents of this data drive onto the replacement. The drive contents include documents & media, user folders (My Documents and related), and some programs (games etc).

Problem

The problem is that the bad sectors on the source disk causes most disk cloning tools to fail with read errors. Attempted approaches include:

1. Disk clone from live boot environment with Acronis True Image. Fails due to read errors.


2. Disk clone from live boot environment with Clonezilla. Fails due to read errors.


3. Disk clone using Roadkil's Unstoppable Copier. Fails due to hardware timeouts in the HDD (application hangs indefinitely).


4. A straightforward copy from source to destination disk using FreeFileSync (preserving file attributes and metadata). This succeeds.

So at the moment I have a replacement disk which contains all of the data from the original disk. Now all I need to is somehow get Windows to replace all references to the old disk to the new one. Is this possible by simply swapping the assigned drive letters? Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

Answer

Thanks all for the responses. I went ahead and tried to do the disk clone from Windows, and surprisingly it worked. I've written up my method in case other people find themselves in similar situations and need an alternative to offline clone tools (for the record, I suspect that Ryan's CloneZilla suggestion would have worked if I had taken the time to configure it correctly, so best to try this as a last resort). Method:

1. Copy disk contents - Using FreeFileSync, I copied the contents of the source disk "F" to the destination disk "G", preserving file attributes and running as administrator. I made sure to remove all of the file ignore patterns so that nothing was missed.


2. Disconnect source disk - I shutdown the machine and physically disconnected the SATA cable from the source disk.


3. Assign new drive letter - After powering up the machine (and getting all of the expected errors about the missing disk), I changed the the destination disk drive letter "G" to that of the source drive letter "F" using Windows' Administrative tools.


4. Reboot - After a final reboot, everything worked as expected. Programs which were installed on the now disconnected source disk worked fine when ran off of the destination disk.

In all honestly I expected this to be problematic, as I know that general wisdom dictates you can't simply copy programs across drives and expect them to work. It seems that the real issue is that you can't copy programs across drive letters, but if you're replacing a disk and keeping the drive letter consistent, you can get away with a file transfer, without the need to clone or reinstall.