Small correction, it had been running about 12 hours when I posted before... now, about 20 hours since starting here is the status: Current status rescued: 29716 MiB, errsize: 37764 KiB, current rate: 3584 KiB/s ipos: 29753 MiB, errors: 802, average rate: 476 KiB/s opos: 29753 MiB Copying data....
Does that look normal? - Matt ----- Original Message ---- From: Matt Boge <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: bug-ddrescue@gnu.org Sent: Monday, January 8, 2007 11:40:36 AM Subject: [Bug-ddrescue] ddrescue 1.3 - questions from a newbie Hello, I ran across your tool while searching for solutions to rescue data from my failing hard drive. I am a newbie to Linux, but I am technical and can understand and follow directions. Anyway, my 200GB NTFS failed to boot the other day, with Windows XP telling me it couldn't read a required file. Subsequent tests, specifically the Maxtor utility, told me that the drive was failing and I needed to replace it. I attempted to repair with the Windows installation disk, but it failed, citing read-errors on the disk. This is when the panic began to set in... I looked around for some tools that I remembered would do a bit->bit copy and if it ran into errors, would ignore them and move on. I wanted as much data as I could get to be on a good drive as soon possible before the drive really kicked the bucket and I was hoping that I could clone the disk, have Windows repair the bad file and not have to reinstall all my apps. I looked at Ghost and some others, but settled on Acronis True Image, as it seemed to do what I wanted. Unfortunately, it appears that True Image works best on a healthy drive and I was never able to get the image copied (the status bar never moved... even after 24 hours). I thought perhaps since the drive I was copying from was IDE and the new one was SATA it could have been the problem. So, I bought a 250 GB IDE drive and it still didn't work. Now, I was truly worried about just getting the data off of it. After some more searching I found your utility from the article I found on this page: http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/Damaged_Hard_Disk I'm pretty inexperienced with Linux, but I have dabbled a little (upgrading my TiVos, for example) and your tool looked like exactly what I needed. I downloaded Knoppix, managed to install ddrescue from a floppy (it wasn't included in Knoppix) and -- after realizing I needed to be logged in as 'root' -- ran the following command from a Konsole terminal window: ddrescue -B -n /dev/hda1 /dev/hdb rescued.log (This was the recommended command from the above guide to "grab most of the error-free areas in a hurry") That was about 24 hours ago and while I suppose "in a hurry" is a relative term, as I type this, here is what the current console status looks like: Current status rescued: 5742 MiB, errsize: 29612 KiB, current rate: 2304 KiB/s ipos: 5771 MiB, errors: 595, average rate: 140 KiB/s opos: 5771 MiB Copying data.... Does that look about right? Seems to me at this rate (approx 5GB/day) it's going to take about a month to complete... am I reading this wrong? So I guess my first question would be did I use the correct command to copy over the good data quickly? If not, what should I be doing? Secondly, here is my attack plan... I would appreciate it if someone would tell me if it looks OK: 1. Copy the good data to a brand new HD (Copy1) using ddrescue. <-- This is where I am now. 2. Attempt to copy from the bad sectors using ddrescue. 3. Remove the failing HD and put aside. 3. Make another copy (Copy 2) from the first copy to another HD (Copy 3) -- I'm assuming it would be OK if this new HD is SATA, right? 4. Use SpinRite (another recommended utility) to attempt to repair the bad sectors on Copy 3. 5. Attempt to repair WindowsXP with the repair utility on the install CD (again, on Copy 3. In my perfect world, Windows would repair successfully and I could find out which of my data files couldn't be repaired and go from there.) 6. If that won't work, I would install XP on a brand new drive and try to copy the data files from Copy3 to the new install. 7. Identify what files didn't make it -- not sure how I'm going to do that yet, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. 8. Attempt to rescue those files specifically -- I'm not sure if I should try off of the original disk or from one of the copies. 9. Once I'm satisfied I tried everything I could to get all the files I need... I will probably run SpinRite on the original failed drive and see what happens. Does this seem like a prudent course? What am I missing? Thanks for all the help, guys... and just a quick reminder while you're reading this: DO A BACKUP RIGHT NOW! - Matt B _______________________________________________ Bug-ddrescue mailing list Bug-ddrescue@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-ddrescue _______________________________________________ Bug-ddrescue mailing list Bug-ddrescue@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-ddrescue
