Best method/tool for cloning a failing HDD for Data Recovery?

nkaufman · 20 Sep 2015

1. Ok, will do.

5. From Anshad's post - "Then i booted the system using "Parted magic" and issued fdisk -l command to list the connected disk's details. sda is the 80 GB source drive, sdb is the target drive and sdc is the USB flash drive to store the log file ( The drive connected to SATA port 1 will be named "sda" , second one will be "sdb" )."

This suggests that he was using old HDD, new HDD and bootable flash drive (assuming this is what you refer to as pendrive). So these are the 3 drives, I don't think that he used 3 HDD along with bootable flash drive.

Hence I wanted to know why he used "/media/sdc1/Log" to save log to flash drive and if I should also do the same since you mentioned that using - recovery.log - in the command without disk nomenclature would save the log in the flash drive.

6. So I can try to create an image with Macrium as an alternative before using ddrescue. Good to know.

Thanks for your assistance and guidance and patience with my endless list of questions. I'm just trying to make sure I have all information before I do this tomorrow when I'll receive the HDD.

jumanji · 20 Sep 2015

I checked in another forum about the location of the log file, just to be sure that I don't make wrong statements.:)

It states "The log file is stored in the directory in which you run the command, unless you specify another location." So definitely it will be stored in the USB pendrive from which you run ddrescue. Just make sure that you use a large enough pendrive so that logfile can be accommodated. An 8GB or even 16GB pendrive should be fine. The log file may not generally exceed 100MB but the larger the drive to be cloned the larger it can be.

Also Anshad Edavana might have run ddrescue from a live CD. When you run it from a Live CD, ddrescue runs from the Ramdrive created in the system. So the log file also will be created in the RAM drive. When the PC is switched off the RAM drive is gone and so also the log file in it. So Anshad could have used a third pen drive to store the log file and directed it to that location.

Your questions are appreciated. When we dig deeper to answer, we learn what we have missed/ forgotten ( my memory does not last for more than 3 days :)) or what we had very casually taken for granted.

jumanji · 20 Sep 2015

Here is another success story with ddrescue. Actually the second one in this forum.

Cant access partition, slow system & file record segment unreadable.

nkaufman · 20 Sep 2015

jumanji said:

Here is another success story with ddrescue. Actually the second one in this forum.

Cant access partition, slow system & file record segment unreadable.

That is great. Can't wait to run ddrescue when I receive my HDD tomorrow. Even I feel like dancing

P.S. Tried to create a disk image with Macrium but first got Error-2 - VSS, then am getting Error-1117 which is I/O device error.

sdowney717 · 20 Sep 2015

https://www.google.com/search?q=gddr...sm=93&ie=UTF-8

gddrescue is an improved version of ddrescue it seems to me.

and exist a gui which is nicer to use than commandline
https://launchpad.net/ddrescue-gui

DDRescue-GUI is a program designed to make it easier to use GNU ddrescue (A Command-Line data recovery tool). It provides a simple graphical method for using ddrescue. This is designed to be as user-friendly as possible so users new to Linux can use ddrescue easily.

I need to boot into ubuntu and take a look myself. what is available.
I usually am on linux. I found it fun to learn new things.

sdowney717 · 20 Sep 2015

In Ubuntu there is the package gddrescue, and also a gui viewer for the resultant log file.
to run the command it is still ddrescue.

There exists though the nice gui package for ubuntu. I just installed it.
https://launchpad.net/ddrescue-gui
To run, it is in the system tools menu.

Here are some screens

nkaufman · 21 Sep 2015

Started ddrescue on a 750GB HDD. After 4.33 hrs following is what I have:

rescued - 329888 MB errsize - 29251 kB
ipos/opos - 330017 MB errors - 312

Still on Pass 1.

nkaufman · 21 Sep 2015

Hello,

Found 2 pieces of information while googling:

(1) https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Ddrescue
Run first
ddrescue -f -n /dev/sdb /root/sdb_rescue.img /root/rescue.log
-f: Force ddrescue to run even if the destination file already exists.
-n: Skip the splitting phase to avoid spending a lot of time trying to rescue the most difficult parts of a file.

Run next to copy only the bad blocks and try 3 times to read from the source before giving up.
ddrescue -d -f -r3 /dev/sdb /root/sdb_rescue.img /root/rescue.log

Do not know if the above approach provides any advantage (time taken?) over our current approach.

(2) https://www.technibble.com/forums/th...ue-help.43930/

I think I've found why Anshad used "/media/sdc1/Log" to save log to flash drive, I think jumanji also referred to LiveCD etc

Using
mkdir /media/storage
mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/zzz /media/storage
(where zzz is the disk name you want the logfile saved to)

then ddrescue command becomes
ddrescue -B -v -n /dev/XXX /dev/YYY /media/storage/logfile.log

which is what Anshad had

nkaufman · 22 Sep 2015

nkaufman said:

Started ddrescue on a 750GB HDD. After 4.33 hrs following is what I have:

rescued - 329888 MB errsize - 29251 kB
ipos/opos - 330017 MB errors - 312

Still on Pass 1.

After 14.49 hrs, following is the reading:
rescued - 750138 MB errsize - 17403 kB
ipos/opos - 231495 MB errors - 899
Splitting failed blocks

Since I'd not checked for around 10 hours, I do not know if this is pass-2 or pass-3 or a final step after 3 passes were made.

Any ideas on how much more time of rescuing am I looking at?

Thanks,

nkaufman · 22 Sep 2015

Another update before I leave for work:

rescued - 750151 MB errsize - 4452kB
ipos/opos - 231316 errors - 1945
runtime - 16.69 h, successful read - 15 min ago

So, errsize has gone down and errors have gone up. I'm hoping that there is an explanation for this and that this is normal.

Thanks,