Program to clone a failing hard drive

[HFultzjr]

For what it's worth, I have tried to following with mixed sucess.

If data recovery is not critical.
Run HD Regenerator on the drive.
This "may" get it to a state that it can be immediatley cloned, by using Acronis, etc.

****Note I'm not saying in no way that this repairs the old disk, but about 50 - 75% of the time will allow you a good clone.

Works best on a drive with minimal damage.

I'll also 2nd dd_rescue.....you may only get 1 chance to recover info, so this is probably your best option.

The more you use a bad drive, the worse it seems to get.

Tread carefully!

 

[rsarceno]

+1 for DeepSpar DDI. Occasionally I used ddrescue but only when my DDI machine is being used. But there are times even ddrescue will fail and the only solution is DeepSpar. If you want to increase your success rate, I highly recommend DeepSpar.

 

[bertie40]

Any suggestions on how to get hold of a deepspar? Cheapest way ?

Is there a second hand market ?
Refurbished units ?

 

[rsarceno]

Any suggestions on how to get hold of a deepspar? Cheapest way ?
Is there a second hand market ?
Refurbished units ?

My contact is Serge Shirobokov sshirobokov@deepspar dot com. Check with him before buying a used one because you might need access to the forum and ftp site which is only available to registered users.

 

[lcoughey]

Any suggestions on how to get hold of a deepspar? Cheapest way ?

Is there a second hand market ?
Refurbished units ?

With the recent transition from DDI 3 to DDI 4, DeepSpar has stopped updating DDI 3 units. However, at this point in time, most of the standard DDI 4 functionality is available within DDI 3, except for the USB and forensics add-ons. So, for the majority of users out there, DDI 3 is probably good enough...we still have 4 of them running around the clock here with no issues. You might find a lab who is upgrading and willing to sell you the older unit. For us, we are more likely to just add DDI 4 units, rather than replace.

If data recovery is not critical.
Run HD Regenerator on the drive.
This "may" get it to a state that it can be immediatley cloned, by using Acronis, etc.

I'm not going to beat a dead horse over the head. If your goal is to recover data, don't ever run HD Regenerator before making the clone. As has been mentioned before in other threads, programs like this use the drive's built-in sector remapping to "repair" a sector by writing back to the sector. If the data in the sector is not readable, it will be lost during the write-back. Also, it is making a huge assumption that the read errors are surface related and not head related...in which case, you are are only making things worse. One of the first things that one does (or should do) when running DDI is to disable the SMART and sector-remap function of a drive, if possible.

Data recovery is the process of getting data off one drive to another drive. Rather than waste time attempting to read and re-write sectors to the same failing drive with HD Regenerator (or SpinRite), you are better served using ddrescue to clone the entire drive. If you get to 80% with HD Regenerator and your drive completely crashes, you have likely wasted a day or two and got absolutely nothing to show for it. If you get to 80% while cloning the drive and it completely crashes, you have, at the very least, every sector you have read. It may not be a perfect copy, but with the use of data recovery software, you should be able to recover some of the data.

So, even if the data is not of significant value, it is a better use of your time to clone the drive than to run HDD Regenerator. If you want to run HDD Regenerator on the drive after you have cloned it, in hopes to "repair" it, knock your socks off...though, I don't recommend ever re-using the drive with critical data again.

 

[jfm]

Gotta install ddrecue on some distro...
Try with software manager and type in ddrescue
Click and install.

No USB, go SATA.

 

[16k_zx81]

looks like my search for a quality front end for ddrescue has come to an end.

BOOTMED

A distro based on ubuntu with a range of data recovery options, included a GIU for ddrescue - its basic but it works.

..

 

[JustInspired]

looks like my search for a quality front end for ddrescue has come to an end.

BOOTMED

A distro based on ubuntu with a range of data recovery options, included a GIU for ddrescue - its basic but it works.

..

Oh, what? I only just learned the commands/syntax for DDRescue!

But seriously, that's nice and easy. Good find mate.

The $3.99 seems to go to good use too:

Where does your $3.99 go?

My wife and I work in Southern Brazil at a Christ centered orphanage (check out our blog). We depend on donations for our living expenses. BootMed Plus and a few other projects I have provide me with money that I can spend on electronics that don't qualify as "living expenses," but that help me maintain and grow my computer knowledge. Some of the payment also goes to overhead. Paypal takes a portion of each transaction and I also pay Amazon S3 to host the very large BootMed Plus files.

Our work at the children's home takes up a lot of our time, making it impossible to provide support (even paid support.) Between our busy lifestyle and the inconsistent internet, I can be late in responding to emails or processing refunds.

 

[16k_zx81]

Oh, what? I only just learned the commands/syntax for DDRescue!

But seriously, that's nice and easy. Good find mate.

The $3.99 seems to go to good use too:

Just a quick question re ddrescue

I have just had a drive come in that looks like it could be a candidate

The drive is 2tb with, apparently, about 1tb of data on it

so for ddrescue to make an image, do I need to have 2tb of storage space available on a second drive? Or in this instance, with 1tb of actual data to recover, will it only require that much room on the second drive for the image?

 

[SilverLeaf]

Ddrescue requires that the destination (device or image file) be at least as large as the device being rescued. So, you would need at least a 2TB drive if you are doing a device-to-device rescue. If you are rescuing to an image file, then you would need at least 2TB of free space on the drive storing the image.

This can be a PITA sometimes. On one occasion, I was attempting to rescue a 160GB drive directly onto a new 160GB drive. The rescue failed because the "usable size" of the new drive was just a wee bit smaller than the source, or maybe ddrescue just needed a little elbow room on the new drive.

Be prepared, as a failing 2TB drive may take days to finish.

ps. I do believe it is possible to pipe ddrescue through gzip to generate a compressed image file, but I can't say for sure...never tried it.

 

[JustInspired]

I just last week bought some 2TB and 3TB drives because of this. A 1TB drive came in and after 14 days and nights of DDRescue the image got too big to fit on my empty 1TB drive! DDRescue came up with a message that it had run out of space.
I moved the image file and log file to a new 2TB drive and it finished after about another day.
They don't always take that long but this has made me do some serious rethinking. Can't really have my only data recovery machine tied up doing just one drive for over two weeks!

 

[bertie40]

........They don't always take that long but this has made me do some serious rethinking. Can't really have my only data recovery machine tied up doing just one drive for over two weeks!

It looks like we both need a dedicated workstation.
Hay Ho.

 

[16k_zx81]

I just last week bought some 2TB and 3TB drives because of this. A 1TB drive came in and after 14 days and nights of DDRescue the image got too big to fit on my empty 1TB drive! DDRescue came up with a message that it had run out of space.
I moved the image file and log file to a new 2TB drive and it finished after about another day.
They don't always take that long but this has made me do some serious rethinking. Can't really have my only data recovery machine tied up doing just one drive for over two weeks!

Yeah, I guess it depends how much physical space you have in your workshop. I use a couple of laptops with estate and a toaster on each - saves space over a box, monitor keyboard and mouse


The good thing I guess about a data recovery unit is that the processing power does not have to be very high... In fact a raspberry pi could probably do this type of imaging if it supported Sata.

 

[JustInspired]

did you mean e-sata on the laptops?

 

[Majestic]

I have a failing western digital drive that can only be connected through USB. It shows up as uninitialized disk of 2 tb in disk manager but I'm able to (VERY SLOWLY) recover the data using getdataback. Do you guys recommend I use ddrescue to clone the drive and them retry using getdataback on the good drive ??

Majestic

 

[16k_zx81]

did you mean e-sata on the laptops?

Yes. Stupid autocorrect .

.......

 

[codegreen]

Do you guys recommend I use ddrescue to clone the drive and them retry using getdataback on the good drive ??

Always get an image first.

 

[JustInspired]

I have a failing western digital drive that can only be connected through USB. It shows up as uninitialized disk of 2 tb in disk manager but I'm able to (VERY SLOWLY) recover the data using getdataback. Do you guys recommend I use ddrescue to clone the drive and them retry using getdataback on the good drive ??

Majestic

Bear in mind, you may need a bigger drive than 2TB to send the image to. I just did a 1TB image with DDRescue last week and it ran out of space on an empty 1TB destination drive.