dd_rhelp

iisjman07

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Seems like this script could prove quite useful for data recovery on drives with bad blocks:
dd_rhelp is a bash script that handles a very usefull program written in C by
Kurt Garloff which is called dd_rescue, it roughly act as the dd linux command
with the caracteristic to NOT stop when it falls on read/write errors.

But using it is quite time consuming. This is where dd_rhelp come to help

In short, it'll use dd_rescue on your entire disc, but will try to gather the
maximum valid data before trying for ages on badsectors.
So if you leave
dd_rhelp work for infinite time, it'll have the same effect as a simple
dd_rescue. But because you might not have this infinite time (this could
indeed take really long in some cases... ), dd_rhelp will jump over bad
sectors and rescue valid data. In the long run, it'll parse all your device
with dd_rescue.
You can Ctrl-C it whenever you want, and rerun-it at will, it'll resume it's
job as it depends on the log files dd_rescue creates.

In addition, progress will be shown in a ASCII picture of your device beeing
rescued.

http://vaab.free.fr/utilities/dd_rhelp/index.en.html
 
Confusingly enough, there are three similarly named Unix-y tools that do similar things: dd_rescue, dd_rhelp, and GNU ddrescue (note: no underscore!).

I've used all three, and GNU ddrescue is the best: more options, more flexibility, and it is very good at getting the most data off of damaged disks without taking an unreasonable amount of time. This site does a great job explaining the differences.

ddrescue is available on SystemRescueCD, a Linux LiveCD that I keep in my toolkit.
 
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