Re: [Bug-ddrescue] ddrescue 1.3 - questions from a newbie
Yea... I'm aware of the inherent vulnerability of RAID0, but I don't want to lose the HD space by using RAID1. However, this time I'm prepared to implement a robust backup procedure and utilize either a USB or NAS (or most probably both) for the backups and to decentralize my data (i.e. pics and vids on my NAS, MyDocs and Preferences backed up on the USB drive and routine backups ups to DVDs). I am also looking into paying an on-line service for backups (i.e. X-drive or Carbonite) just in case of a house fire! (Can you tell I don't want to go through this again ;)) Thanks for the Linux info... I will look into that. - Matt - Original Message From: Ariel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Matt Boge <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: bug-ddrescue@gnu.org Sent: Sunday, February 4, 2007 4:35:44 AM Subject: Re: [Bug-ddrescue] ddrescue 1.3 - questions from a newbie On Wed, 10 Jan 2007, Matt Boge wrote: > PS. I think I'd like to consider creating multiple partitions in my new > setup (two 400GB drives that I will be setting up with RAID0). Watch out with RAID0, if you do that, if either one of the drives die you lost the data from both. And recovery is much more complicated because half the data is on each drive. > I'd install Windows XP on one partition and I think I'd like to install a > Linux variant on the other to play around with and get more familiar > with this OS (hey, an old dog can ALWAYS learn new tricks, right?). Any > suggestions on how I should do this and which variant of Linux I should > install? Create the partitions outside linux, first create the Windows partition (type doesn't matter, as you will see). Then create the Linux partition, and then finally delete the windows one. You are doing it in this strange order to make sure the second partition was also the second one created. Don't forget to create a swap partition if you will use one (you can also swap onto a data partition). Don't install linux yet (since potentially windows will erase it, and then you'll have wasted your time) boot windows setup, and ask to partition the drive - windows should complain about some mystery partition on the drive, but ignore that, and let window partition the free space on the drive. Finish windows install. Now install linux, first of all linux will not get confused about the extra partition, second the installer will (should) notice windows and create an entry for it. And finally linux will do the right thing in regard to making sure you can actual boot (window can't handle it). Anyway, as far as what variant (called a distribution) I like Debian, but try these pages: http://www.tuxs.org/chooser/ http://www.zegeniestudios.net/ldc/ -Ariel PS. Another option (if your chosen distib supports it), is to be dumb, and let windows own the whole drive, then have the distrib shrink the partition to make room for linux. If you use RAID on the drives you are complicating things, and I just don't know what linux will do. If it's hardware raid it should work, but if you use windows raid, I'm just not sure.___ Bug-ddrescue mailing list Bug-ddrescue@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-ddrescue
Re: [Bug-ddrescue] ddrescue 1.3 - questions from a newbie
Thanks, Ariel. I just set off the process again with, but splitting the errors I'm prepared to wait a while. After this, I plan on running SpinRite on the damaged disk to see if I can eek any more data off of it and then run ddrescue again for the final time on that drive. Then I will copy the data to a new, partitioned drive as you suggested and the source drive will be my "safe" copy and the target my "scratch" copy. I then will then run scandisk on the scratch copy to attempt to recover any file names and folders lost in the process and hopefully find the lost directories. And you're right... no plans to boot (or even directly access) the drive with Windows. Once completed, I'll attempt to access it through the network (another Linux challenge for me) and copy the files to my new Windows XP machine that way. I'll keep you posted. - Matt - Original Message From: Ariel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Matt Boge <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: David Burton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; bug-ddrescue@gnu.org Sent: Sunday, February 4, 2007 4:22:06 AM Subject: Re: [Bug-ddrescue] ddrescue 1.3 - questions from a newbie On Fri, 2 Feb 2007, Matt Boge wrote: > (By the way, I know I should have copied it to /dev/hdb1, but should I > have created that partition with a tool like cfdisk first or would > including that in the ddrescue command have created the partition > itself?) You should have created the partition first (with cfdisk) (rebooted, probably), and then copied to that partition. > Anyway, to capture the MBR, I then ran (with some helpful guidance from > here): > ddrescue -B -n -s 63 /dev/hda rescued_mbr.ima rescued_mbr.log The MBR is not really useful to you. > So, I've got a copy of my MBR in as an image om my USB drive, a rescued > copy of my damaged partition on a new, unpartitioned drive (/dev/hdb). > Based on some more help here, I created a new partition on another new > drive (/dev/sda1) with the IDENTICAL specs as the failed one (I used > cfdisk to do this). I then ran the following two commands: > ddrescue -B rescued_mbr.ima /dev/sda1 > ddrescue -B /dev/hdb /dev/sda1 > Does that look right to you? Is that all I really need to do to > /dev/sda1? Is it now what it would have looked like if I had run > ddrescue correctly the first time? Is this my "best-good-copy" now and > should I duplicate this back to my /dev/hdb drive, overwriting the > unpartitioned data from the first ddrescue run? No no!! Just run ddrescue -B /dev/hdb /dev/sda1 (you don't technically need ddrescue to do that copy, you can use dd, or even cp, but that's not important). Do not copy the MBR! First of all the MBR is only meant for the start of the bare drive, not the partition. Second an MBR from one drive will not (necessarily) work in a different one unless they have identical sizes. The MBR holds a couple of things: the partition table, and the DOS boot stuff. The partition table you have already, and the DOS boot stuff would be better created with windows. (Setup should do it, but I have a feeling you are not going to be booting that drive anyway, so it doesn't actually matter.) > Also, when I rerun ddrescue with autosplit turned on can I run it to the > new partition (i.e. /dev/sda1) or will the ddrescue log file be off by > 63 sectors? Hmm. At first I was going to tell you it will be off, but actually - at first you were copying TO /dev/hda (or whatever it is), now you are copying to /dev/hdb1 - but you moved all the data downward into the partition, it makes no difference to ddrescue where the data is physically, logically in both cases the data starts at the top of the output device! Now if you had done FROM /dev/hda you would be in trouble. Also, if there was a difference it would not be 63 sectors. The exact amount depends on your drive. > I'm sorry this is all so confusing, but I'm just not sure how much of a > mistake I made originally by not creating that partition on /dev/hdb/ > and if the relatively simple process above of merging the MBR and > rescued data to a new partition on my /dev/sda drive was all I needed to > do to correct that mistake. You're OK. Don't merge the MBR, create it fresh, then copy from the data from /dev/hdb to /dev/sda1. Be aware - the drive sizes are NOT the same, i.e. the partition on /dev/sda1 is smaller then the total size of /dev/hdb, you WILL get an error while doing this, but as long as all the data was copied, it doesn't matter. Just check that the amount of data copied is EXACTLY equal to the size of the partition on the original drive, if it is, you know you got all of it. > Really, thanks again for your time and patience dealing with me on > this... I'm sure you have much better things to do
Re: [Bug-ddrescue] ddrescue 1.3 - questions from a newbie
On 2/4/07, Ariel wrote: On Wed, 10 Jan 2007, Matt Boge wrote: > PS. I think I'd like to consider creating multiple partitions in my new > setup (two 400GB drives that I will be setting up with RAID0). Watch out with RAID0, if you do that, if either one of the drives die you lost the data from both. And recovery is much more complicated because half the data is on each drive. > I'd install Windows XP on one partition and I think I'd like to install a > Linux variant on the other to play around with and get more familiar > with this OS (hey, an old dog can ALWAYS learn new tricks, right?). Any > suggestions on how I should do this and which variant of Linux I should > install? Create the partitions outside linux, first create the Windows partition (type doesn't matter, as you will see). Then create the Linux partition, and then finally delete the windows one. You are doing it in this strange order to make sure the second partition was also the second one created. Don't forget to create a swap partition if you will use one (you can also swap onto a data partition). Don't install linux yet (since potentially windows will erase it, and then you'll have wasted your time) boot windows setup, and ask to partition the drive - windows should complain about some mystery partition on the drive, but ignore that, and let window partition the free space on the drive. Finish windows install. Now install linux, first of all linux will not get confused about the extra partition, second the installer will (should) notice windows and create an entry for it. And finally linux will do the right thing in regard to making sure you can actual boot (window can't handle it). Anyway, as far as what variant (called a distribution) I like Debian, but try these pages: http://www.tuxs.org/chooser/ http://www.zegeniestudios.net/ldc/ -Ariel PS. Another option (if your chosen distib supports it), is to be dumb, and let windows own the whole drive, then have the distrib shrink the partition to make room for linux. If you use RAID on the drives you are complicating things, and I just don't know what linux will do. If it's hardware raid it should work, but if you use windows raid, I'm just not sure. Just a success story with this sort of setup. I have built a laptop and a desktop dual-booting Debian GNU/Linux and Windows XP. I ran the Windows install off of the boot CD. When selecting where to install Windows, I create a partition on the naked drive that leaves 20 GB or whatever for Linux to use later. For example, if I was installing on a 60 GB drive, I would tell the Windows install to create a 40 GB partition to install on and to ignore the rest leaving it in the raw. I then completely installed Windows. After that, I boot from a Debian GNU/Linux boot CD. I tell it to use all the free space on the disk to install itself and let it handle the partitioning. It uses the GRUB boot loader which picks up the Windows XP installation with no problems. There is a boot menu that lets me choose Linux or Windows. It has worked effortlessly both times I have done it. -Jason ___ Bug-ddrescue mailing list Bug-ddrescue@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-ddrescue
Re: [Bug-ddrescue] ddrescue 1.3 - questions from a newbie
On Wed, 10 Jan 2007, Matt Boge wrote: PS. I think I'd like to consider creating multiple partitions in my new setup (two 400GB drives that I will be setting up with RAID0). Watch out with RAID0, if you do that, if either one of the drives die you lost the data from both. And recovery is much more complicated because half the data is on each drive. I'd install Windows XP on one partition and I think I'd like to install a Linux variant on the other to play around with and get more familiar with this OS (hey, an old dog can ALWAYS learn new tricks, right?). Any suggestions on how I should do this and which variant of Linux I should install? Create the partitions outside linux, first create the Windows partition (type doesn't matter, as you will see). Then create the Linux partition, and then finally delete the windows one. You are doing it in this strange order to make sure the second partition was also the second one created. Don't forget to create a swap partition if you will use one (you can also swap onto a data partition). Don't install linux yet (since potentially windows will erase it, and then you'll have wasted your time) boot windows setup, and ask to partition the drive - windows should complain about some mystery partition on the drive, but ignore that, and let window partition the free space on the drive. Finish windows install. Now install linux, first of all linux will not get confused about the extra partition, second the installer will (should) notice windows and create an entry for it. And finally linux will do the right thing in regard to making sure you can actual boot (window can't handle it). Anyway, as far as what variant (called a distribution) I like Debian, but try these pages: http://www.tuxs.org/chooser/ http://www.zegeniestudios.net/ldc/ -Ariel PS. Another option (if your chosen distib supports it), is to be dumb, and let windows own the whole drive, then have the distrib shrink the partition to make room for linux. If you use RAID on the drives you are complicating things, and I just don't know what linux will do. If it's hardware raid it should work, but if you use windows raid, I'm just not sure. ___ Bug-ddrescue mailing list Bug-ddrescue@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-ddrescue
Re: [Bug-ddrescue] ddrescue 1.3 - questions from a newbie
On Fri, 2 Feb 2007, Matt Boge wrote: (By the way, I know I should have copied it to /dev/hdb1, but should I have created that partition with a tool like cfdisk first or would including that in the ddrescue command have created the partition itself?) You should have created the partition first (with cfdisk) (rebooted, probably), and then copied to that partition. Anyway, to capture the MBR, I then ran (with some helpful guidance from here): ddrescue -B -n -s 63 /dev/hda rescued_mbr.ima rescued_mbr.log The MBR is not really useful to you. So, I've got a copy of my MBR in as an image om my USB drive, a rescued copy of my damaged partition on a new, unpartitioned drive (/dev/hdb). Based on some more help here, I created a new partition on another new drive (/dev/sda1) with the IDENTICAL specs as the failed one (I used cfdisk to do this). I then ran the following two commands: ddrescue -B rescued_mbr.ima /dev/sda1 ddrescue -B /dev/hdb /dev/sda1 Does that look right to you? Is that all I really need to do to /dev/sda1? Is it now what it would have looked like if I had run ddrescue correctly the first time? Is this my "best-good-copy" now and should I duplicate this back to my /dev/hdb drive, overwriting the unpartitioned data from the first ddrescue run? No no!! Just run ddrescue -B /dev/hdb /dev/sda1 (you don't technically need ddrescue to do that copy, you can use dd, or even cp, but that's not important). Do not copy the MBR! First of all the MBR is only meant for the start of the bare drive, not the partition. Second an MBR from one drive will not (necessarily) work in a different one unless they have identical sizes. The MBR holds a couple of things: the partition table, and the DOS boot stuff. The partition table you have already, and the DOS boot stuff would be better created with windows. (Setup should do it, but I have a feeling you are not going to be booting that drive anyway, so it doesn't actually matter.) Also, when I rerun ddrescue with autosplit turned on can I run it to the new partition (i.e. /dev/sda1) or will the ddrescue log file be off by 63 sectors? Hmm. At first I was going to tell you it will be off, but actually - at first you were copying TO /dev/hda (or whatever it is), now you are copying to /dev/hdb1 - but you moved all the data downward into the partition, it makes no difference to ddrescue where the data is physically, logically in both cases the data starts at the top of the output device! Now if you had done FROM /dev/hda you would be in trouble. Also, if there was a difference it would not be 63 sectors. The exact amount depends on your drive. I'm sorry this is all so confusing, but I'm just not sure how much of a mistake I made originally by not creating that partition on /dev/hdb/ and if the relatively simple process above of merging the MBR and rescued data to a new partition on my /dev/sda drive was all I needed to do to correct that mistake. You're OK. Don't merge the MBR, create it fresh, then copy from the data from /dev/hdb to /dev/sda1. Be aware - the drive sizes are NOT the same, i.e. the partition on /dev/sda1 is smaller then the total size of /dev/hdb, you WILL get an error while doing this, but as long as all the data was copied, it doesn't matter. Just check that the amount of data copied is EXACTLY equal to the size of the partition on the original drive, if it is, you know you got all of it. Really, thanks again for your time and patience dealing with me on this... I'm sure you have much better things to do than to hand-hold a Linux newbie. But you all have been such a lot of help and really appreciate it. You're welcome. Sorry about the delay with responding, be sure to let us know how it turns out. -Ariel ___ Bug-ddrescue mailing list Bug-ddrescue@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-ddrescue
Re: [Bug-ddrescue] ddrescue 1.3 - questions from a newbie
Before I start the process, I'm just looking for a quick confirmation that what I've outlined below looks OK. Thanks, Matt - Original Message Subject: Re: [Bug-ddrescue] ddrescue 1.3 - questions from a newbie Thanks Ariel, Yea, I've pretty much accepted the idea that this will not be a quick and easy process and I'm OK with that. Fortunately, I've got a secondary computer I can use for this purpose and am willing to be diligent and patient. When I first ran ddrescue, I mistakenly copied the partition to a non-partitioned disk: ddrescue -B -n /dev/hda1 /dev/hdb rescued.log (By the way, I know I should have copied it to /dev/hdb1, but should I have created that partition with a tool like cfdisk first or would including that in the ddrescue command have created the partition itself?) Anyway, to capture the MBR, I then ran (with some helpful guidance from here): ddrescue -B -n -s 63 /dev/hda rescued_mbr.ima rescued_mbr.log So, I've got a copy of my MBR in as an image om my USB drive, a rescued copy of my damaged partition on a new, unpartitioned drive (/dev/hdb). Based on some more help here, I created a new partition on another new drive (/dev/sda1) with the IDENTICAL specs as the failed one (I used cfdisk to do this). I then ran the following two commands: ddrescue -B rescued_mbr.ima /dev/sda1 ddrescue -B /dev/hdb /dev/sda1 Does that look right to you? Is that all I really need to do to /dev/sda1? Is it now what it would have looked like if I had run ddrescue correctly the first time? Is this my "best-good-copy" now and should I duplicate this back to my /dev/hdb drive, overwriting the unpartitioned data from the first ddrescue run? Also, when I rerun ddrescue with autosplit turned on can I run it to the new partition (i.e. /dev/sda1) or will the ddrescue log file be off by 63 sectors? I'm sorry this is all so confusing, but I'm just not sure how much of a mistake I made originally by not creating that partition on /dev/hdb/ and if the relatively simple process above of merging the MBR and rescued data to a new partition on my /dev/sda drive was all I needed to do to correct that mistake. Really, thanks again for your time and patience dealing with me on this... I'm sure you have much better things to do than to hand-hold a Linux newbie. But you all have been such a lot of help and really appreciate it. - Matt - Original Message From: Ariel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Matt Boge <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: bug-ddrescue@gnu.org; David Burton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, January 25, 2007 5:29:04 PM Subject: Re: [Bug-ddrescue] ddrescue 1.3 - questions from a newbie On Thu, 25 Jan 2007, Matt Boge wrote: > Hey guys, > I don't want to be a pest, but if there is any chance someone could take > a few minutes and look at my questions below, I would definitely > appreciate it. Again, I really appreciate what you have all done > already, but I'm kinda dead in the water right now and I'm a little > anxious about moving forward on my own. > I have been checking out the rescued data using Knoppix, and while a lot > of data was saved, I noticed a huge glaring hole: the My Pictures > folder was missing. As you can probably imagine, this is one of the few > folders I really cared about rescuing and while I was expecting that > some of the data might be lost, I certainly wasn't expecting the entire > folder to not show up. Seems that you had the disk failure where new writes fail, I guess you were writing a file to that directory? Anyway the directory itself may be gone, but most likely all the files in it are still there. If you are using ntfs (not fat32) there is a change yu can save the file names, but otherwise you will lose the file names, but at least you will have the data. Run checkdisk on it, and MAKE SURE you tell it to save lost clusters. > Anyway, I think I'd like to give SpinRite a shot on the damaged drive to > see if I can eek out anymore data, but before I do (and possibly damage > the drive further), I want to be sure that the stuff I did pull off > already with ddrescue is safe. In that vein, I want to have two copies > of the rescued data: one scratch drive (to add any potential new data > saved by SpinRite and updated by a second running of ddrescue) and one > "safe" copy that I can revert to if my scratch drive fiddlings go bad. There is another reason to have a second disk: when you run checkdisk you may end up with less data then you would like, so if that happens you can revert back to your saved disk. Also, before running spinrite, you may want to consider running ddrescue again, using the same logfile and settings etc (watch out if you moved the data because of your partition issue, I don't remember what you did). It's po
Re: [Bug-ddrescue] ddrescue 1.3 - questions from a newbie
Thanks Ariel, Yea, I've pretty much accepted the idea that this will not be a quick and easy process and I'm OK with that. Fortunately, I've got a secondary computer I can use for this purpose and am willing to be diligent and patient. When I first ran ddrescue, I mistakenly copied the partition to a non-partitioned disk: ddrescue -B -n /dev/hda1 /dev/hdb rescued.log (By the way, I know I should have copied it to /dev/hdb1, but should I have created that partition with a tool like cfdisk first or would including that in the ddrescue command have created the partition itself?) Anyway, to capture the MBR, I then ran (with some helpful guidance from here): ddrescue -B -n -s 63 /dev/hda rescued_mbr.ima rescued_mbr.log So, I've got a copy of my MBR in as an image om my USB drive, a rescued copy of my damaged partition on a new, unpartitioned drive (/dev/hdb). Based on some more help here, I created a new partition on another new drive (/dev/sda1) with the IDENTICAL specs as the failed one (I used cfdisk to do this). I then ran the following two commands: ddrescue -B rescued_mbr.ima /dev/sda1 ddrescue -B /dev/hdb /dev/sda1 Does that look right to you? Is that all I really need to do to /dev/sda1? Is it now what it would have looked like if I had run ddrescue correctly the first time? Is this my "best-good-copy" now and should I duplicate this back to my /dev/hdb drive, overwriting the unpartitioned data from the first ddrescue run? Also, when I rerun ddrescue with autosplit turned on can I run it to the new partition (i.e. /dev/sda1) or will the ddrescue log file be off by 63 sectors? I'm sorry this is all so confusing, but I'm just not sure how much of a mistake I made originally by not creating that partition on /dev/hdb/ and if the relatively simple process above of merging the MBR and rescued data to a new partition on my /dev/sda drive was all I needed to do to correct that mistake. Really, thanks again for your time and patience dealing with me on this... I'm sure you have much better things to do than to hand-hold a Linux newbie. But you all have been such a lot of help and really appreciate it. - Matt - Original Message From: Ariel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Matt Boge <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: bug-ddrescue@gnu.org; David Burton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, January 25, 2007 5:29:04 PM Subject: Re: [Bug-ddrescue] ddrescue 1.3 - questions from a newbie On Thu, 25 Jan 2007, Matt Boge wrote: > Hey guys, > I don't want to be a pest, but if there is any chance someone could take > a few minutes and look at my questions below, I would definitely > appreciate it. Again, I really appreciate what you have all done > already, but I'm kinda dead in the water right now and I'm a little > anxious about moving forward on my own. > I have been checking out the rescued data using Knoppix, and while a lot > of data was saved, I noticed a huge glaring hole: the My Pictures > folder was missing. As you can probably imagine, this is one of the few > folders I really cared about rescuing and while I was expecting that > some of the data might be lost, I certainly wasn't expecting the entire > folder to not show up. Seems that you had the disk failure where new writes fail, I guess you were writing a file to that directory? Anyway the directory itself may be gone, but most likely all the files in it are still there. If you are using ntfs (not fat32) there is a change yu can save the file names, but otherwise you will lose the file names, but at least you will have the data. Run checkdisk on it, and MAKE SURE you tell it to save lost clusters. > Anyway, I think I'd like to give SpinRite a shot on the damaged drive to > see if I can eek out anymore data, but before I do (and possibly damage > the drive further), I want to be sure that the stuff I did pull off > already with ddrescue is safe. In that vein, I want to have two copies > of the rescued data: one scratch drive (to add any potential new data > saved by SpinRite and updated by a second running of ddrescue) and one > "safe" copy that I can revert to if my scratch drive fiddlings go bad. There is another reason to have a second disk: when you run checkdisk you may end up with less data then you would like, so if that happens you can revert back to your saved disk. Also, before running spinrite, you may want to consider running ddrescue again, using the same logfile and settings etc (watch out if you moved the data because of your partition issue, I don't remember what you did). It's possible ddrescue will be able to find more data - also this time turn on autosplit mode, I remember you had that off the first time. And finally, after spinrite finishes, run ddrescue on the disk, again with the
Re: [Bug-ddrescue] ddrescue 1.3 - questions from a newbie
On Thu, 25 Jan 2007, Matt Boge wrote: Hey guys, I don't want to be a pest, but if there is any chance someone could take a few minutes and look at my questions below, I would definitely appreciate it. Again, I really appreciate what you have all done already, but I'm kinda dead in the water right now and I'm a little anxious about moving forward on my own. I have been checking out the rescued data using Knoppix, and while a lot of data was saved, I noticed a huge glaring hole: the My Pictures folder was missing. As you can probably imagine, this is one of the few folders I really cared about rescuing and while I was expecting that some of the data might be lost, I certainly wasn't expecting the entire folder to not show up. Seems that you had the disk failure where new writes fail, I guess you were writing a file to that directory? Anyway the directory itself may be gone, but most likely all the files in it are still there. If you are using ntfs (not fat32) there is a change yu can save the file names, but otherwise you will lose the file names, but at least you will have the data. Run checkdisk on it, and MAKE SURE you tell it to save lost clusters. Anyway, I think I'd like to give SpinRite a shot on the damaged drive to see if I can eek out anymore data, but before I do (and possibly damage the drive further), I want to be sure that the stuff I did pull off already with ddrescue is safe. In that vein, I want to have two copies of the rescued data: one scratch drive (to add any potential new data saved by SpinRite and updated by a second running of ddrescue) and one "safe" copy that I can revert to if my scratch drive fiddlings go bad. There is another reason to have a second disk: when you run checkdisk you may end up with less data then you would like, so if that happens you can revert back to your saved disk. Also, before running spinrite, you may want to consider running ddrescue again, using the same logfile and settings etc (watch out if you moved the data because of your partition issue, I don't remember what you did). It's possible ddrescue will be able to find more data - also this time turn on autosplit mode, I remember you had that off the first time. And finally, after spinrite finishes, run ddrescue on the disk, again with the logfile - if spinrite managed to recover any bad sectors, then ddrescue will copy them, but it won't bother copying data that it already managed to get. BTW: The first time I had a disk error it was 3weeks to a month before I was up and running again. The second time was quicker since I had raid (although it didn't help that I had 2 disks fail at the same time, and that Maxtor sent me a defective disk as a warranty replacement). -Ariel ___ Bug-ddrescue mailing list Bug-ddrescue@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-ddrescue
Re: [Bug-ddrescue] ddrescue 1.3 - questions from a newbie
On 1/25/07, Matt Boge wrote: Hey guys, I don't want to be a pest, but if there is any chance someone could take a few minutes and look at my questions below, I would definitely appreciate it. Again, I really appreciate what you have all done already, but I'm kinda dead in the water right now and I'm a little anxious about moving forward on my own. I have been checking out the rescued data using Knoppix, and while a lot of data was saved, I noticed a huge glaring hole: the My Pictures folder was missing. As you can probably imagine, this is one of the few folders I really cared about rescuing and while I was expecting that some of the data might be lost, I certainly wasn't expecting the entire folder to not show up. Anyway, I think I'd like to give SpinRite a shot on the damaged drive to see if I can eek out anymore data, but before I do (and possibly damage the drive further), I want to be sure that the stuff I did pull off already with ddrescue is safe. In that vein, I want to have two copies of the rescued data: one scratch drive (to add any potential new data saved by SpinRite and updated by a second running of ddrescue) and one "safe" copy that I can revert to if my scratch drive fiddlings go bad. Thanks for the time you have put in already, and I will certainly understand if you don't have the time to help me some more. Either way, I will post follow up emails to update the progress... if nothing more than to bring closure to the thread. - Matt I can't tell you how to do anything with this in ddrescue. That said, I am personally familiar with two Windows tools that can find "orphaned" or "lost" files. Basically, they look through the raw data on the drive and when they find something that looks like it should be a file, but there is no reference to it, it will give it some name like 01.jpg and let you recover it wherever you want. So, your pictures or at least some of them are probably still there even if the folder they used to be in is gone. I use ActiveFile Recovery Pro and Recover My Files for this sort of thing. Both are non-free Windows programs. -Jason ___ Bug-ddrescue mailing list Bug-ddrescue@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-ddrescue
Re: [Bug-ddrescue] ddrescue 1.3 - questions from a newbie
Hey guys, I don't want to be a pest, but if there is any chance someone could take a few minutes and look at my questions below, I would definitely appreciate it. Again, I really appreciate what you have all done already, but I'm kinda dead in the water right now and I'm a little anxious about moving forward on my own. I have been checking out the rescued data using Knoppix, and while a lot of data was saved, I noticed a huge glaring hole: the My Pictures folder was missing. As you can probably imagine, this is one of the few folders I really cared about rescuing and while I was expecting that some of the data might be lost, I certainly wasn't expecting the entire folder to not show up. Anyway, I think I'd like to give SpinRite a shot on the damaged drive to see if I can eek out anymore data, but before I do (and possibly damage the drive further), I want to be sure that the stuff I did pull off already with ddrescue is safe. In that vein, I want to have two copies of the rescued data: one scratch drive (to add any potential new data saved by SpinRite and updated by a second running of ddrescue) and one "safe" copy that I can revert to if my scratch drive fiddlings go bad. Thanks for the time you have put in already, and I will certainly understand if you don't have the time to help me some more. Either way, I will post follow up emails to update the progress... if nothing more than to bring closure to the thread. - Matt - Original Message From: Matt Boge <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: bug-ddrescue@gnu.org Sent: Friday, January 19, 2007 3:05:11 PM Subject: Re: [Bug-ddrescue] ddrescue 1.3 - questions from a newbie Hi David, I'd like to thank you for your detailed response... I ended up moving the process to a secondary computer (to free up my primary one to reinstall Windows) and after many, many hours, I'm happy to say it finally finished! I ended up with about 2000+ errors for about 250MB of my 200GB drive. Pretty good, I think. Anyway, after reading your message, I realize that I made a big mistake by copying the data to an unpartitioned drive. Hopefully, I can follow your very helpful instructions to attempt to rescue my data. So, here's where I am: 1. I have 3 drives connected to my computer, which I am running the Knoppix Live CD to access. /dev/hda - Damaged 200 GB drive /dev/hdb - New 250 GB drive /dev/sda - New SATA 300 GB drive 2. I used ddrescue to copy the data to /dev/hdb. Here was the specific command I used: ddrescue -B -n /dev/hda1 /dev/hdb rescued.log As you've noted, I failed to copy to a partition on the new drive (i.e. /dev/hdb1). Actually, I'm not really clear if I was supposed to create the partition first (using cfdisk?) or if the ddrescue command would have created it. 3. I followed your instructions and copied the MBR from the failed drive to an image file with the following command: ddrescue -B -n -s 63 /dev/hda rescued_mbr.ima rescued_mbr.log (I used cfdisk to verify that the /dev/hda1 partition did indeed start at sector 63) 4. So, here I am... rescued data on hdb and an MBR image file on my USB key. My next step was to follow your instructions to copy both of them to my new SATA drive (/dev/sda): # Copy the MBR / primary partition table: ddrescue -B rescued_mbr.ima /dev/hdc # Copy the first (only?) data partition: ddrescue -B /dev/hdb /dev/hdc1 (Actually, using sda instead of hdc, above) But, I have a couple of questions... do I need to format the new drive and create a partition before I move the data over? Should I use the formatting tools in Linux or would I be better off with a Windows-based tool? Also, Ariel mentioned that for Windows, it would be a good idea to create a partition that was *exactly* the same size as the original... down to the byte. How would you suggest I do that? 5. Now, assuming I have completed the above steps, what should be my next move? I'd like to try to scrape more data off of the original drive if I can... 250MB lost isn't bad, but I'm afraid that may span a lot of files, so I'd like to try some more. I have SpinRite, which you have already commented on (I now understand how it works, I think), but can you recommend any other tools? You have also provided some good information to try to find out which files I am missing, but note that since I screwed up the original copy by not copying the MBR, those scripts won't work with the ddrescue log file. Any suggestions on what I can do to get them to work? Also, I'm a perl newbie... what do I need to run these scripts? Thanks a lot for all your help! - Matt - Original Message From: David Burton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Matt Boge <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, January 8, 2007 7:32:51 PM Subject: Re: [Bug-ddrescue] ddrescue 1.3 - questions from a newbie Hi Matt,
Re: [Bug-ddrescue] ddrescue 1.3 - questions from a newbie
Hi David, I'd like to thank you for your detailed response... I ended up moving the process to a secondary computer (to free up my primary one to reinstall Windows) and after many, many hours, I'm happy to say it finally finished! I ended up with about 2000+ errors for about 250MB of my 200GB drive. Pretty good, I think. Anyway, after reading your message, I realize that I made a big mistake by copying the data to an unpartitioned drive. Hopefully, I can follow your very helpful instructions to attempt to rescue my data. So, here's where I am: 1. I have 3 drives connected to my computer, which I am running the Knoppix Live CD to access. /dev/hda - Damaged 200 GB drive /dev/hdb - New 250 GB drive /dev/sda - New SATA 300 GB drive 2. I used ddrescue to copy the data to /dev/hdb. Here was the specific command I used: ddrescue -B -n /dev/hda1 /dev/hdb rescued.log As you've noted, I failed to copy to a partition on the new drive (i.e. /dev/hdb1). Actually, I'm not really clear if I was supposed to create the partition first (using cfdisk?) or if the ddrescue command would have created it. 3. I followed your instructions and copied the MBR from the failed drive to an image file with the following command: ddrescue -B -n -s 63 /dev/hda rescued_mbr.ima rescued_mbr.log (I used cfdisk to verify that the /dev/hda1 partition did indeed start at sector 63) 4. So, here I am... rescued data on hdb and an MBR image file on my USB key. My next step was to follow your instructions to copy both of them to my new SATA drive (/dev/sda): # Copy the MBR / primary partition table: ddrescue -B rescued_mbr.ima /dev/hdc # Copy the first (only?) data partition: ddrescue -B /dev/hdb /dev/hdc1 (Actually, using sda instead of hdc, above) But, I have a couple of questions... do I need to format the new drive and create a partition before I move the data over? Should I use the formatting tools in Linux or would I be better off with a Windows-based tool? Also, Ariel mentioned that for Windows, it would be a good idea to create a partition that was *exactly* the same size as the original... down to the byte. How would you suggest I do that? 5. Now, assuming I have completed the above steps, what should be my next move? I'd like to try to scrape more data off of the original drive if I can... 250MB lost isn't bad, but I'm afraid that may span a lot of files, so I'd like to try some more. I have SpinRite, which you have already commented on (I now understand how it works, I think), but can you recommend any other tools? You have also provided some good information to try to find out which files I am missing, but note that since I screwed up the original copy by not copying the MBR, those scripts won't work with the ddrescue log file. Any suggestions on what I can do to get them to work? Also, I'm a perl newbie... what do I need to run these scripts? Thanks a lot for all your help! - Matt - Original Message From: David Burton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Matt Boge <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, January 8, 2007 7:32:51 PM Subject: Re: [Bug-ddrescue] ddrescue 1.3 - questions from a newbie Hi Matt, Your recovery process is obviously going rather slowly, but, take heart, sometimes the process speeds up after it gets past the worst error area. Unless there are only a few errors, the copy time is almost entirely proportional to the number of errors, because error-free sectors copy so quickly and bad sectors take so long to fail. (Unfortunately, I don't know of any way to stop the drive's very slow internal error recover process, for a quicker first pass.) Your strategy seems pretty good except for a couple of small mistakes. First, your recovery command should have been: ddrescue -B -n /dev/hda /dev/hdb rescued.log instead of ddrescue -B -n /dev/hda1 /dev/hdb rescued.log Unfortunately, the command you used will omit the MBR, so there'll be no partition table on /dev/hdb. Oops! I do NOT recommend that you start over. Once you've scraped some data from a drive, it is never a good idea to throw it away and start over. But it would be a good idea to go ahead and grab the part that you missed: ddrescue -B -n -s 63 /dev/hda rescued_mbr.ima rescued_mbr.log (That's assuming that /dev/hda1 starts at sector 63. You can check that with "fdisk -lu /dev/hda".) You're gonna have a little chore, eventually, putting the two pieces back together... you'll have to do something like this (assuming that /dev/hdb is a scratch drive, and /dev/hdc is the eventual new drive): # Copy the MBR / primary partition table: ddrescue -B rescued_mbr.ima /dev/hdc # Copy the first (only?) data partition: ddrescue -B /dev/hdb /dev/hdc1 Secondly, I think you mistake how SpinRite works. Your step #4 needs to run SpinRite on the original (f
Re: [Bug-ddrescue] ddrescue 1.3 - questions from a newbie
Well, what was once a crawl has now become little more than a screeching halt. 2 GB in 24 hours, with over 1000 errors in that time. The rescue rate is still pretty awesome (42533/42666 for a 99.7% rate!), the time factor is killing me. So, since it looks like I will have to reinstall Windows anyway, I have decided to offload the rescue process from my primary computer to an older one. I assume this shouldn't be a problem if I use the same drives in the same configuration utilizing the log file saved on my floppy, right? Please let me know as soon as possible if I'm totally wrong on this... or if you think I should make some sort of change to the rescue. Again, I think I'd like to get the good data moved over as quickly as possible, but perhaps I'm misinterpreting the problem with the drive and really shouldn't worry about it killing any more data. Any suggestions at this point would be greatly and most appreciatively welcomed! Thanks, Matt PS. I think I'd like to consider creating multiple partitions in my new setup (two 400GB drives that I will be setting up with RAID0). I'd install Windows XP on one partition and I think I'd like to install a Linux variant on the other to play around with and get more familiar with this OS (hey, an old dog can ALWAYS learn new tricks, right?). Any suggestions on how I should do this and which variant of Linux I should install? - Original Message From: Matt Boge <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "DePriest, Jason R." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: bug-ddrescue@gnu.org Sent: Tuesday, January 9, 2007 11:35:28 AM Subject: Re: [Bug-ddrescue] ddrescue 1.3 - questions from a newbie Thanks Jason. Yea, the recovery is the most important thing at this point. This is my primary computer, so it would be nice to be up and running quickly... but from what I've learned in the last few days, this isn't a quick process and if i want my data back, I'll have to wait. I guess I was more concerned with the failing drive getting worse as the process goes along... working so hard on rescuing the errors while good data sits there waiting to be copied. I'm afraid the drive will kick the bucket before it gets to the good data. My experience here is thin, so I'm not sure if this is a legitimate worry or not. If it's the write-heads that are the culprit, then I suppose I shouldn't worry about it as ddrescue is simply reading from the drive, right? My drive isn't "clicking" as I've heard it described elsewhere, but the drive has always been a little noisy when seeking and doing the nightly maintenance (i.e. virus scans, defrag, etc) so I'm not really sure what went wrong. Incidentally, I purchased a new HD a few weeks ago to replace this drive because the noise was annoying for guests that were sleeping in my computer room. Of course, before I had a chance to swap drives, this one failed... ugh. Anyway, I will use this time to study up a little more on HDs and they way they store data... it's very interesting. When all of this is done, I plan to install two Seagate SATA drives with RAID 0 (data striping) and look to establish a regular backup routine so I won't have to go through this again. I'm considering several options... from setting up an external drive (perhaps one that supports network access, so I can also backup my laptop and kids' computer) to subscribing to one of the many "online" backup services. Any suggestions or experiences would be greatly appreciated. Thanks again. - Matt - Original Message From: "DePriest, Jason R." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Matt Boge <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: Ariel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; bug-ddrescue@gnu.org Sent: Tuesday, January 9, 2007 11:04:40 AM Subject: Re: [Bug-ddrescue] ddrescue 1.3 - questions from a newbie On 1/9/07, Matt Boge wrote: > Yikes... I guess I spoke too soon. 12 hours ago I was encouraged by the > speed pickup (ipos:38152 MiB), but now we have slowed to a crawl (ipos: 39548 > MiB). > I had a 20 GB drive go bad on me and it took about 72 hours to get a full image. It didn't even have that many bad places, but it was unbootable and unmountable (as a readable filesystem). So, don't worry too much about the time if you time is all you have. I had this drive sitting around for over two years before I was able to recover anything from it. ___ 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
Re: [Bug-ddrescue] ddrescue 1.3 - questions from a newbie
On 1/9/07, Matt Boge wrote: Yikes... I guess I spoke too soon. 12 hours ago I was encouraged by the speed pickup (ipos:38152 MiB), but now we have slowed to a crawl (ipos: 39548 MiB). I had a 20 GB drive go bad on me and it took about 72 hours to get a full image. It didn't even have that many bad places, but it was unbootable and unmountable (as a readable filesystem). So, don't worry too much about the time if you time is all you have. I had this drive sitting around for over two years before I was able to recover anything from it. ___ Bug-ddrescue mailing list Bug-ddrescue@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-ddrescue
Re: [Bug-ddrescue] ddrescue 1.3 - questions from a newbie
Thanks Jason. Yea, the recovery is the most important thing at this point. This is my primary computer, so it would be nice to be up and running quickly... but from what I've learned in the last few days, this isn't a quick process and if i want my data back, I'll have to wait. I guess I was more concerned with the failing drive getting worse as the process goes along... working so hard on rescuing the errors while good data sits there waiting to be copied. I'm afraid the drive will kick the bucket before it gets to the good data. My experience here is thin, so I'm not sure if this is a legitimate worry or not. If it's the write-heads that are the culprit, then I suppose I shouldn't worry about it as ddrescue is simply reading from the drive, right? My drive isn't "clicking" as I've heard it described elsewhere, but the drive has always been a little noisy when seeking and doing the nightly maintenance (i.e. virus scans, defrag, etc) so I'm not really sure what went wrong. Incidentally, I purchased a new HD a few weeks ago to replace this drive because the noise was annoying for guests that were sleeping in my computer room. Of course, before I had a chance to swap drives, this one failed... ugh. Anyway, I will use this time to study up a little more on HDs and they way they store data... it's very interesting. When all of this is done, I plan to install two Seagate SATA drives with RAID 0 (data striping) and look to establish a regular backup routine so I won't have to go through this again. I'm considering several options... from setting up an external drive (perhaps one that supports network access, so I can also backup my laptop and kids' computer) to subscribing to one of the many "online" backup services. Any suggestions or experiences would be greatly appreciated. Thanks again. - Matt - Original Message From: "DePriest, Jason R." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Matt Boge <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: Ariel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; bug-ddrescue@gnu.org Sent: Tuesday, January 9, 2007 11:04:40 AM Subject: Re: [Bug-ddrescue] ddrescue 1.3 - questions from a newbie On 1/9/07, Matt Boge wrote: > Yikes... I guess I spoke too soon. 12 hours ago I was encouraged by the > speed pickup (ipos:38152 MiB), but now we have slowed to a crawl (ipos: 39548 > MiB). > I had a 20 GB drive go bad on me and it took about 72 hours to get a full image. It didn't even have that many bad places, but it was unbootable and unmountable (as a readable filesystem). So, don't worry too much about the time if you time is all you have. I had this drive sitting around for over two years before I was able to recover anything from it. ___ Bug-ddrescue mailing list Bug-ddrescue@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-ddrescue
Re: [Bug-ddrescue] ddrescue 1.3 - questions from a newbie
Hi Matt, Your recovery process is obviously going rather slowly, but, take heart, sometimes the process speeds up after it gets past the worst error area. Unless there are only a few errors, the copy time is almost entirely proportional to the number of errors, because error-free sectors copy so quickly and bad sectors take so long to fail. (Unfortunately, I don't know of any way to stop the drive's very slow internal error recover process, for a quicker first pass.) Your strategy seems pretty good except for a couple of small mistakes. First, your recovery command should have been: ddrescue -B -n /dev/hda /dev/hdb rescued.log instead of ddrescue -B -n /dev/hda1 /dev/hdb rescued.log Unfortunately, the command you used will omit the MBR, so there'll be no partition table on /dev/hdb. Oops! I do NOT recommend that you start over. Once you've scraped some data from a drive, it is never a good idea to throw it away and start over. But it would be a good idea to go ahead and grab the part that you missed: ddrescue -B -n -s 63 /dev/hda rescued_mbr.ima rescued_mbr.log (That's assuming that /dev/hda1 starts at sector 63. You can check that with "fdisk -lu /dev/hda".) You're gonna have a little chore, eventually, putting the two pieces back together... you'll have to do something like this (assuming that /dev/hdb is a scratch drive, and /dev/hdc is the eventual new drive): # Copy the MBR / primary partition table: ddrescue -B rescued_mbr.ima /dev/hdc # Copy the first (only?) data partition: ddrescue -B /dev/hdb /dev/hdc1 Secondly, I think you mistake how SpinRite works. Your step #4 needs to run SpinRite on the original (failing) drive, not on the copy. (Note: my ddr2sr.pl "ddrescue-to-SpinRite" script will help you target just the bad areas of the drive with SpinRite.) When ddrescue finishes, before you run SpinRite, the new copy will have only two kinds of sectors: those which contain perfect data, and those which have nothing at all (probably zeros, if /dev/hdb was initially all zeros). Then, when SpinRite has finished working on the bad sectors, you'll have two kinds of formerly-bad sectors: Those which were fully recovered (probably about 10% of them), and those which were only partially recovered (the other 90%). You can then use ddrescue to add the (fully & partially) recovered sectors to /dev/hdb. But be sure to save a copy of your rescued.log file first, because ddrescue can't tell the difference between the fully recovered sectors and the partially recovered sectors -- they will all read "successfully" when ddrescue sees them. So, after you use ddrescue to add the SpinRite-recovered sectors to /dev/hdb, the rescued.log file will no longer be an accurate record of which parts if the drive are damaged. (Dd-rescue's logfile has no mechanism for representing damaged/partially-recovered sectors.) But the combination of the new and old ddrescue log files, plus the SpinRite logfile, encapsulates that information. My ddr2nfi.pl tool uses all three logfiles to generate NFI commands for the truly damaged sectors, for trying to deduce which files are impacted by the damage. (Note: run the resulting .bat file of NFI commands on a scratch copy of the recovered drive, not the main/best copy, since Windows always "messes with" a drive when it mounts it.) For hours of entertainment, download my Perl scripts that I use when doing dd-rescue recoveries. One http://www.burtonsys.com/download/ddr2sr.zip It contains: clustersize.pl -- "Shows cluster size(s) for FAT and NTFS partitions" ddrsummarize.pl -- "Summarize a ddrescue log file" ddrsplit.pl -- "DDRescue logfile SPLITter" ddrcombine.pl -- "DDRescue logfile COMBINEr" ddrlogand.pl-- "DDR LOGical .AND." ddrlogor.pl -- "DDR LOGical .OR." ddrlognot.pl-- "DDR LOGical .NOT." ddr2sr.pl -- "ddrescue-to-SpinRite" ddr2nfi.pl -- "DDRescue to NFI" nficruncher.pl -- "Process the output of many NFI commands" fat32inf.pl -- "FAT32 info (this one is still under construction) foreach.pl -- "Repeat a command for each filename or argument" ddrcopyincrement.pl -- "Copy additional recovered sectors" ddrwipe.pl -- "Obliterate all the GOOD sectors on a failing disk drive" samplescripts.zip -- some shell scripts ddrescue_perl_helper_programs.txt -- documentation (see also comments in the scripts) There are examples in the samplescripts.zip of using a "raw" device for a later "pass" to read sector-at-a-time, so that the unrecovered parts will be down to a granularity of one sector, instead of a full Linux buffered disk block. Unfortunately, raw devices vary in implementation between Linux versions, so you might have to fiddle with the scripts to make that part work. Unfortunately, some of the other scripts assume that the destination is a copy of the full drive, including MBR, and expect the logfile to describe
Re: [Bug-ddrescue] ddrescue 1.3 - questions from a newbie
Yikes... I guess I spoke too soon. 12 hours ago I was encouraged by the speed pickup (ipos:38152 MiB), but now we have slowed to a crawl (ipos: 39548 MiB). Don't get me wrong... the rescue rate is still wonderful (39475 rescued), but I'm a little worried about the drive itself. I understand that the more errors, the longer it takes, but should I begin to consider restarting the process and doing the fix you mentioned to ignore the bad sectors and restart to grab the good data first and then go back and let it churn? Also, I was reading somewhere that using the utility hdparam to turn off DMA might help... any opinions on this? Thanks, Matt - Original Message From: Matt Boge <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Ariel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: bug-ddrescue@gnu.org Sent: Monday, January 8, 2007 8:51:45 PM Subject: Re: [Bug-ddrescue] ddrescue 1.3 - questions from a newbie Thanks Ariel! You have been a lot of help and I really appreciate it. The log file is being saved to the floppy that I had ddrescue on... looks like there is plenty of room and I can hear it accessing and writing to it every little bit. At least I'm encouraged now... the speed did pick up a bit (I'm now on ipos:38152 MiB) and the success rate it great (you're right... I'll be ecstatic if it holds up!) I'm going to look over your previous post in some more detail and probably get back with some more questions. Thanks again. - Matt - Original Message From: Ariel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Matt Boge <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: bug-ddrescue@gnu.org Sent: Monday, January 8, 2007 6:25:47 PM Subject: Re: [Bug-ddrescue] ddrescue 1.3 - questions from a newbie On Mon, 8 Jan 2007, Matt Boge wrote: > 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 Looks normal. As of the data it tried so far, 29753MiB, it rescued 29716MiB, and didn't rescue 37764KiB, for a success rate of 99.87%. That's quite good. If the entire hard disk works out that way, be happy! Remember to save the logfile every once in a while like I mentioned. Maybe you have a USB key you can use? If you can, stop ddrescue move the logfile to the USB key, and restart it - telling ddrescue where the logfile is. It will continue where it left off. Or maybe don't touch it, hopefully the computer won't crash. -Ariel ___ 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
Re: [Bug-ddrescue] ddrescue 1.3 - questions from a newbie
Thanks Ariel! You have been a lot of help and I really appreciate it. The log file is being saved to the floppy that I had ddrescue on... looks like there is plenty of room and I can hear it accessing and writing to it every little bit. At least I'm encouraged now... the speed did pick up a bit (I'm now on ipos:38152 MiB) and the success rate it great (you're right... I'll be ecstatic if it holds up!) I'm going to look over your previous post in some more detail and probably get back with some more questions. Thanks again. - Matt - Original Message From: Ariel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Matt Boge <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: bug-ddrescue@gnu.org Sent: Monday, January 8, 2007 6:25:47 PM Subject: Re: [Bug-ddrescue] ddrescue 1.3 - questions from a newbie On Mon, 8 Jan 2007, Matt Boge wrote: > 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 Looks normal. As of the data it tried so far, 29753MiB, it rescued 29716MiB, and didn't rescue 37764KiB, for a success rate of 99.87%. That's quite good. If the entire hard disk works out that way, be happy! Remember to save the logfile every once in a while like I mentioned. Maybe you have a USB key you can use? If you can, stop ddrescue move the logfile to the USB key, and restart it - telling ddrescue where the logfile is. It will continue where it left off. Or maybe don't touch it, hopefully the computer won't crash. -Ariel ___ Bug-ddrescue mailing list Bug-ddrescue@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-ddrescue
Re: [Bug-ddrescue] ddrescue 1.3 - questions from a newbie
On Mon, 8 Jan 2007, Matt Boge wrote: 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 Looks normal. As of the data it tried so far, 29753MiB, it rescued 29716MiB, and didn't rescue 37764KiB, for a success rate of 99.87%. That's quite good. If the entire hard disk works out that way, be happy! Remember to save the logfile every once in a while like I mentioned. Maybe you have a USB key you can use? If you can, stop ddrescue move the logfile to the USB key, and restart it - telling ddrescue where the logfile is. It will continue where it left off. Or maybe don't touch it, hopefully the computer won't crash. -Ariel ___ Bug-ddrescue mailing list Bug-ddrescue@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-ddrescue
Re: [Bug-ddrescue] ddrescue 1.3 - questions from a newbie
On Mon, 8 Jan 2007, Matt Boge wrote: ... I was hoping that I could clone the disk, have Windows repair the bad file and not have to reinstall all my apps. It's not going to be just one bad file, and you will have to reinstall everything. But, maybe you can recover your _data_. When disks fail like this, often what fails (at least by me) is the write head, and everything that got written to is gone. Other times a whole section of the drive fails. But either way you are going to have to do a full reinstall, and configuring apps, and all that. Especially on windows with it's single file, prone to failure (because it gets written to so much), registry. 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). Usually I try to use a failing drive as little as possible once it starts failing, it depends on what happened to it, but it's possible the more it's used the more failures you'll get. Maybe not - it all depends on what happened, which obviously you don't know. I thought perhaps since the drive I was copying from was IDE and the new one was SATA it could have been the problem. Nah it won't make a difference which hardware type. But: the partition sizes need to match exactly or windows is going to get really upset! ddrescue -B -n /dev/hda1 /dev/hdb rescued.log Looks semi-right. You are copying a partition to an entire un-partitioned disk. Windows will never be able to read that second disk (linux will have no problem though). You should have partitioned the second disk first - matching EXACTLY, to the byte, the partition size of the first disk. (Windows partition tools don't tell you how many bytes, use cfdisk, and switch to sector view, if you can't get it to match, you will need to change heads/sectors per track.) Another thing: the file rescued.log - where are you storing it? ddrescue will store things in a ramdisk by default, but it's far from unusual for a dead disk to crash the computer - then you will lose the log! Copy it to the floppy frequently! Next time (!?) you do this, partition the new hard disk, part of it for the old data, and a small partition to hold the logfile. 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? Yes, that looks right - it's very slow when it finds an error because it tries, over, and over, and over. Wiiiting each time for the hard disk to try over, and you get the picture. It'll speed WAY up once you get past the bad areas (well, that assumes the bad areas are in a clump). BTW there is a patch to linux to make it not try multiple times each time it finds a bad sector. If you really need to you can try to find and use it. It's probably too much trouble though. 1. Copy the good data to a brand new HD (Copy1) using ddrescue. <-- This is where I am now. Looks good with the caveats I mentioned. 2. Attempt to copy from the bad sectors using ddrescue. That implies running ddrescue again, using it's logfile, to re-try the bad sectors. OR at the very least running without the -n flag. Re-trying the bad sectors usually pointless. Removing the -n (which means splitting the bad areas, looks at each and every sector, trying to recover it), is probably a good idea. But potentially very time consuming. 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? Yes it would be OK, and this is a VERY good idea. While you copy the data, this time, partition the new disk and copy the data to a partition. (You'll need to learn how to use dd and cfdisk.) 4. Use SpinRite (another recommended utility) to attempt to repair the bad sectors on Copy 3. Useless. There won't be an bad sectors on Copy 3 - there will simply be empty sectors. Unless you mean try to repair the _filesystem_ on copy 3 - that is an important step, and not an easy one. After you are 100% sure there is no more recoverable data on the bad disk, then run SpinRite on the bad one - maybe, just maybe it will recover some more data. If it does you can ask ddrescue to give it another try and it will copy any sectors it can. I doubt SpinRite can do this though. 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.) Sorry, but that aint gonna hap
Re: [Bug-ddrescue] ddrescue 1.3 - questions from a newbie
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] 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
