Apart from the traditional implementations of a Unix
dd utility (e. g., one found in
the GNU Core Utilities), there are some special versions of it, dedicated for rescuing the data from damaged (badly readable) disks:
- GNU ddrescue (by Antonio Diaz Diaz);
seems to be the best choice from these two ones [1, 2];
there's a GUI log viewer for it (ddrescueview), and also some other helper utilities (ddrutility);
- dd_rescue (by Kurt Garloff);
there's also a wrapper script for it called dd_rhelp.
The Debian distribution software archives, starting from version 7.0 ("Wheezy"), have only the
GNU ddrescue; you can install it the following way:
# apt-get install gddrescue
The convenient way to use this utility is to make an image (a binary dump) of the whole defective disk (FDD, HDD, CD, DVD etc.) with its help, and then apply data recovery / content extraction programs (e. g.,
TestDisk) directly to the disk image.
Anyway, regular backups & redundant data storage solutions should save you from data recovery problems
:-)
References:
- Disk drive recovery: ddrescue, dd_rescue, dd_rhelp - System Administration Bits of Knowledge (by John Gilmore)
- Damaged Hard Disk - CGSecurity
---
Last updated: 2013-12-08
