Okay, so I used to be able to recover 90% of data from a bad drive with ease and the last 3 hard drives have been nothing but trouble. Using Linux I’d image the drive using dd if=/dev/drive of=/output/backup.img bs=16065b
However, that seems to be failing miserably as of late and I’m beginning to wonder if Linux just isn’t as versatile at this approach any more and is throwing hissy fits on bad sectors that it used to ignore (or so it seemed).
So my question, what techniques do you use? I’m definitely a linux guy so any ideas along those lines I’ll be happy, but if you only use Windows, I’m willing to go that path too (if I must).
Forgive me, but are you doing this data recovery for others? I mean, you are either one unlucky person or you emit some sort of anti-drive vibe that causes these drives to sort of try to escape your presence. Somehow I’m guessing there are other humans involved here, yes?
Anyway, the question itself is a tad general in nature. I don’t think any two drives go “bad” for the same reason, so diverse approaches to recovering data might be in order.
And what kind of drives are you having trouble with?
And what sort of hardware resources can you get your hands on?
Years ago, I was able to retrieve some data from a failed drive by turning the drive upside down as that stopped the arm from clicking. But I still lost a lot of data because of bad sectors. You tried ddrescue? There is a disk imaging program for Linux that will image a hard drive in reverse which stops the look ahead buffer or something from causing the read to fail on bad sectors. I don’t know if that is what you are using. Don’t remember the name.
Definitely. Seems everyone around me is having terrible failures that are resulting in bad sectors as of late…
That was sort of intentional, as it is such a diverse topic and others have “their ways” and even more of a different approach
All sorts. They are all mechanical at this point (not SSD related failures yet), all have been SATA and I do have a SATA to USB connector. The one desktop drive I have, Linux just won’t recognize the drive at all! Windows does… but Linux just says: What drive?, I don’t see a drive… first time I’ve had that happen.
All I have is the SATA to USB convertor. I “could” plug it directly in using SATA, but I rather not.
I’ve tried partimage, dd, and R-Studio NTFS (my last resort, as it takes forever and usually obfuscates the folder and file structure making it hard to identify what was really restored).
I don’t really get out and about as much anymore, so I don’t know anyone that’s had such trouble. I thought HD failure was a rare event – very rare, actually.
I’d bet my two cents there’s a heck of a lot more info on the Net than my little library holds, or my limited experience. But as I intend to start going to more ISOC meetings in my region I’ll be running into all sorts of folks in various fields in this business, to include those that may be able to answer such questions like yours, so I thought I’d dip my toe in the water here and ask those questions. Sorry to be a bother, if I was.
A bother? Not at all. I’m always willing to share any info that may help others. I just seem to be on a streak of bad luck. Normally I don’t have this much of an issue.
Well, thank you once – and thank you twice for not bashing me over the head for my shameless plug for the ISOC. But every little bit helps and so many folks don’t know about us. Uh oh, another plug?
