I am trying to copy data from a failing hard drive, but sometimes Directory Opus hangs. It locks up really bad.
Is there some way I can get it to ignore corrupt files from the very start of copying so it can keep on copying all the good files?
Not sure if there is an answer, but I just thought I would ask.
I don't think so, because DO should always report corrupt files (it's not the same like skipping files). You also better use a special tool (e.g. R-Studio) which is also able to recover files which DO will report as corrupt.
The first thing you should do is make a disk image of the failing drive. Do all your recovery efforts from the image - you won't do any further damage to the actual drive this way.
When you say "it locks up really bad" it sounds like it's actually the device drivers that are hanging, which happens at a much lower level than Opus runs at. Check Event Viewer and see if there are any entries for around the same time, you'll probably find reports of device timeouts or similar low-level hardware problems.
jon. There is certainly a hardware problem. It is a failing drive.
If I remove the drive, Directory Opus unlocks.
Are there any specific settings I need to use to make the image, Sasa, or does R-Studio handle it for me?
You just need to choose which drive to search and and where to restore the files (choose a different physical drive, e.g. USB-HDD, and not another partition on the same drive!).
R-Studio also offers creating an image you can restore from (see echo14612's answer).
Pulling an image is good advice, but also needs a fully functional drive in most cases I guess. Failing disks sometimes still do as long as the backup/recovery takes, if you put them in the fridge before you start rescueing data. Also cool it down constantly while reading from it. If cooling does not help, try heat, different position, different controller, different pcb.
If all fails and data is important, professional recovery labs can do miracles. They are not necessarily very expensive, some do analysis for free, you pay only if they were able to help and maybe give you the chance to look at what can be rescued beforehand.
If the disk contents are important, it could be worth trying SpinRite, grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm .
I don't know if it would work, but I don't think it could hurt.
Thanks guys.
What would be great is if you could set Directory Opus to skip all conflicting files from the start of copying instead of having to wait for the prompt, which can take a long time on a failing drive.
You can use Copy WHENEXISTS=skip for that.
Sorry, but I don't know how to do that.
How can I do that, jon?
If it's just something you want to do once or twice, press the > key and type it in to run it as an ad-hoc command.
Otherwise see the Customize section of the manual for information on how to configure a toolbar button or hotkey.
Thanks jon. 
You shouldn't copy the files with DO, as they could be copied but even on success they could be corrupt!
Edit: Due to reorganization I moved some files on an ext. HDD last week. Then I copied them back - everything was ok, but after opening the files, some of them were corrupt and useless, because the drive had bad sectors.
Now, you tell me. 
I told you... e.g. R-Studio or other recovery tools. DO is not designed to recover files from a corrupt HDD. You could try with DO (because it depends on the error the drive has got), but on lots of files it's safer to use a recovery tool, because they verify and retry more often (that's also the reason why it takes longer and of course it depends on the condition of the failed drive).
That isn't specific to Opus.
If you have a physically failing drive, you can try with normal tools but specialised recovery tools may work better. (Even then, you may have data that is corrupt but not detected, as is the nature of a hardware failure, but those tools will do a lot of extra checks that Windows does not normally do when reading files.)
You also want to do as little as possible to the failing drive, as every operation done to it can bring it closer to total failure once it is in such a bad state. That's why imaging the drive to a working one is often recommended as the first step. (Although doing that can then hide data corruption... Data recovery isn't simple and sometimes you have to take a gamble with one method vs another.)
@Sasa
I think this is not correct and puts DO into bad light for no reason.
Copying files and ending up with corrupt ones, is very unusual with any filemanager, unless there's something very arkward going on.
At first bad sectors on a drive get fixed by the drive itself (re-positioned) as long as it has enough good spare sectors at hand.
You might get noticeably delays and hickups while this happens, but generally you will not take notice of this, as this is an expected thing to happen.
Once the number of bad sectors on the disk reaches a specific threshold, Windows might warn you, because it does look at the SMART data of the hard drive, where the drive logs the bad sectors it encountered. Meanwhile, NTFS does the same as the drive, if you try to write a file and it could not be written successfully (because of bad sectors) it trys again in a different place and marks this sector bad for itself.
Copying files onto a drive should not lead to corrupt data without Windows/any filemanager complaining. Reading them later is another story.
So I'm really astonished about what you experienced. If I'm allowed to guess:
Your copy operation all went well, it was the drive which failed to hold the data after it has been written successfully?
@Protocol
If things can be copied without itches, go on and do it with DO. If you get errors, leave DO behind and make an image of the drive/volume first (I also suggest R-Studio DriveImage) and make sure to tick "Ignore bad sectors" somewhere there in the beginning of the process to not end up with halted operations, while you're out drowning your fears in beer or something. o) After that, try to recover what's left from the disk-image, maybe check the log the imaging tool gives you about any read-errors which occured.
@Leo
You stressed some good points! (while I was typing.. o)
Especially the gamble-thing, copy/rescue now or try to be safe and create another image, all this while the drive is dying continuously etc.