Another way to do this will be to copy as much data as possible, without retrying or splitting sectors:įollowing this let it retry previous errors thrice, using uncached reads: In both cases, the -r option determines the number of times gddrescue will try to read when it encounters an error (-1 = infinity). GNU ddrescue will use the log file to only read the gaps with errors.
The following command illustrates how to image partition. If it’s only a partition of that particular drive, the path would look something like this /dev/sda1. Say, if /dev/sda contains data to be recovered, you’ll need to acquire another disk (or other media) onto which to save the output image.
It’s present on most of the Linux distros, and is a part of System Rescue Disk that has been bundled in this month’s Alpha DVD.įirst identify the disk or partition that is giving problems using the command sudo fdisk -l.
Go to bit.ly/tXPZy7 for instructions on how to install and use cygwin ddrescue for Windows. We’ll be using a program called GNU ddrescue, this is primarly made for Linux, but is also available on Windows through cygwin. Hence you should use NTFS or Ext4 file systems that can handle such file size. Keep in mind that if the image size is greater than 4GB you’ll not be able to use an FAT32 filesystem (usually found on USB drives) to store the image, since there is a 4GB limit to the maximum size of a file on the FAT32 filesystem.
Despite this it is generally considered to be a good practice to first create an image the device and run recovery software on that image. Though this is not mandatory, if hardware failure is not the problem, you can recover data directly from the device. We’ll start off buy making an image of the device/drive and work on the image file for data recovery. One thing that is a hallmark of data recovery is the excitement, you feel as if you’re Sherlock Holmes, and all that is missing is a pipe. Make an image of the lost drive/partition If you prefer Windows you’ll have to remove the disk physically and attach to another computer and attempt For recovering you can either use a LiveCD or LiveUSB in case you prefer to use Linux for data recovery. Shut down the affected machine as soon as possible. You should NOT write to afailed device, as it can worsen a hardware failure, and overwrite existent data in case of lost files. Here are some tips on how to try and recover data from a damaged disk. If you’re careful then you can recover some or most of the data (depends on the severity of the reason that caused the data to go AWOL). Though all is not lost, the data is recoverable because the information isn’t immediately removed from the disk. The reason could be anything from a corrupt file system, a diabolical virus, carelessness or just a cosmic roll of dice. It’s like your worst nightmare coming alive. Imagine, all your photographs, the painstakingly compiled multimedia collection - music, videos and music, important files and documents gone in the blink of an eye.