Nabble - Gnu - ddrescue

Thank you!!!

2009-12-19T13:11:25Z

This mail ain't about a bug, of a fix, this mail is to tell you guys,
who made this wonderful tool, a big thank you! You helped me, with
ddrescue, to save a software raid 1 from dying. The data couldn't
replicate because of a power outage that caused some bad sectors, and
the raid to reconstruct. Well, raid cannot coexist with bad sectors
and the worst part was that the bad sectors were on the drive
containing the data. But ddrescue did the trick, it managed to clone
the drive onto another identical drive!!!! Of course the raid wasn't
working, I had to reconfigure and rebuild, but without data loss!!!

I'm still euphoric about this...

Thank you so very much!

--
root is a friend of mine

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Re: Outfile destination size

2009-12-13T11:27:13Z

Mateo Leyba wrote:
> I have a 500G drive that contained aprox 320G of data that dumped on me, I
> am recovering to a 1T drive that had 800G avail on it. Everything was going
> well but my copy stopped over the weekend with a No space let on device
> error, my image so far is approx 800G. This is confusing me, how is my image
> copy larger than the original disk? I just dumped the extra stuff on the
> recovery destination to give me the full 1T and resumed the copy and it's
> back at it, but I obviously did not allow myself enough room for the
> recovery, how much space do I really need and can I resume this on yet
> another drive if space runs out again without starting over?

Try reading these messages:
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-ddrescue/2008-12/msg00021.html
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-ddrescue/2007-10/msg00012.html

Next time try to be more explicit. You say nothing about your setup or
the commands you used.

Regards,
Antonio.

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Re: Compile Error

2009-12-11T11:33:50Z

Tim Murdoch wrote:

> My Powerbook G4 w/ OS X 10.1.5 does recognize the drive, however, I
> receive the following error when running 'make' for v. 1.11 (the
> /.configure command works fine):
> c++ -Wall -W -O2 -c -o arg_parser.o ../arg_parser.cc
> c++ -Wall -W -O2 -c -o block.o ../block.cc
> c++ -Wall -W -O2 -c -o ddrescue.o ../ddrescue.cc
> ../ddrescue.cc: In function `const char * format_num(long long int,
> long long int = 999999, int = 0)':
> ../ddrescue.cc:310: implicit declaration of function `int llabs(...)'
> make: *** [ddrescue.o] Error 1

You need newer C++ libraries or a newer compiler. You can also find
precompiled versions of ddrescue in the net.

See also the answer to this message
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-ddrescue/2005-08/msg00000.html

Regards,
Antonio.

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Compile Error

2009-12-10T09:38:17Z

Hello,

I'm trying to install DDRescue to recover a dying/dead hard drive.
I've tried using a Powerbook G4 w/ OS X 10.4, however, this does not
recognize the drive.

My Powerbook G4 w/ OS X 10.1.5 does recognize the drive, however, I
receive the following error when running 'make' for v. 1.11 (the
/.configure command works fine):
c++ -Wall -W -O2 -c -o arg_parser.o ../arg_parser.cc
c++ -Wall -W -O2 -c -o block.o ../block.cc
c++ -Wall -W -O2 -c -o ddrescue.o ../ddrescue.cc
../ddrescue.cc: In function `const char * format_num(long long int,
long long int = 999999, int = 0)':
../ddrescue.cc:310: implicit declaration of function `int llabs(...)'
make: *** [ddrescue.o] Error 1

Any ideas what may be causing the issue?

Thanks.

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Outfile destination size

2009-12-09T09:58:38Z

I have a 500G drive that contained aprox 320G of data that dumped on me, I
am recovering to a 1T drive that had 800G avail on it. Everything was going
well but my copy stopped over the weekend with a No space let on device
error, my image so far is approx 800G. This is confusing me, how is my image
copy larger than the original disk? I just dumped the extra stuff on the
recovery destination to give me the full 1T and resumed the copy and it's
back at it, but I obviously did not allow myself enough room for the
recovery, how much space do I really need and can I resume this on yet
another drive if space runs out again without starting over?

Thanks for any suggestions
mateo

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Re: rescuing ntfs parition...

2009-12-05T11:43:54Z

Hi Jon.

What is the exact command you used?

--- On Fri, 12/4/09, Jon Levin <jpiezo@...> wrote:

From: Jon Levin <jpiezo@...>
Subject: [Bug-ddrescue] rescuing ntfs parition...
To: bug-ddrescue@...
Received: Friday, December 4, 2009, 11:09 AM

Hi Everyone,

I have been requested by a friend to rescue some data from a ntfs drive that failed. I first tried using testdisk and it found the primary mft faulty, I replaced it with the backup and then the drive no longer showed as ntfs. I wasn't happy about this, so I decided to use ddrescue to attempt to get all the data off the drive.

I used gparted to create a new partition on an external usb drive, it didn't have ntfs as an option, so I used fat32, rand ddrescue twice (the second time with -vr2 flags) and the output is garbled. I've read of the need to run ntfs.fsck and of course this would be assuming that the target/output partition were ntfs. So, I have downloaded ntfsprogs (already have ntfs-3g) and will try to create a new partition of ntfs to use as a target. However, since source drive is dying, I prefer to not be pounding on it over and over.

Is there a way to work with the 261 separate files that were created on the fat32 partition? Why did ddrescue create all these separate files rather than an image? The names are garbled special characters. I assume that this is because of the partition being fat32?

I have not read it disclosed clearly that the target partition must be of the same type as the source, yet this does make sense. I went the route of fat32 only because gparted didn't have the option, and now I realize I was missing a necessary package.

Is it possible to work with the data created on the fat32 partition?

Please advise, thanks in advance,

Jon

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rescuing ntfs parition...

2009-12-04T08:09:54Z

Hi Everyone,

I have been requested by a friend to rescue some data from a ntfs drive that failed. I first tried using testdisk and it found the primary mft faulty, I replaced it with the backup and then the drive no longer showed as ntfs. I wasn't happy about this, so I decided to use ddrescue to attempt to get all the data off the drive.

I used gparted to create a new partition on an external usb drive, it didn't have ntfs as an option, so I used fat32, rand ddrescue twice (the second time with -vr2 flags) and the output is garbled. I've read of the need to run ntfs.fsck and of course this would be assuming that the target/output partition were ntfs. So, I have downloaded ntfsprogs (already have ntfs-3g) and will try to create a new partition of ntfs to use as a target. However, since source drive is dying, I prefer to not be pounding on it over and over.

Is there a way to work with the 261 separate files that were created on the fat32 partition? Why did ddrescue create all these separate files rather than an image? The names are garbled special characters. I assume that this is because of the partition being fat32?

I have not read it disclosed clearly that the target partition must be of the same type as the source, yet this does make sense. I went the route of fat32 only because gparted didn't have the option, and now I realize I was missing a necessary package.

Is it possible to work with the data created on the fat32 partition?

Please advise, thanks in advance,

Jon

--
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510 215-5229

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Trimming failed blocks -- errsize being reduced -- no need to run with -r ?

2009-11-29T00:40:23Z

Hi all,

First as others have said, thanks to Antonio and all other
contributors for a wonderful tool. I will definitely be donating via
paypal.

Below you can see the result of my ddrescue run, which has now been
grinding away for 8+ days on a 160g drive. Currently the recovery is
in the "Trimming failed blocks" phase and the errsize is being reduced
while the rescued count is increasing.

Does this mean that I will not have to rerun the tool with the -r
option? Pointers to documentation about exactly what is happening in
this phase are appreciated.

Thanks again,
Matt

minerva:~ root# ddrescue -vn /dev/disk2 /dev/disk1 minerva-recovery.log

About to copy 9223 PBytes from /dev/disk2 to /dev/disk1
Starting positions: infile = 0 B, outfile = 0 B
Copy block size: 128 hard blocks
Hard block size: 512 bytes
Max_retries: 0
Direct: no Sparse: no Split: no Truncate: no

Press Ctrl-C to interrupt
Initial status (read from logfile)
rescued: 0 B, errsize: 0 B, errors: 0
Current status
rescued: 159432 MB, errsize: 609 MB, current rate: 21504 B/s
ipos: 26316 MB, errors: 9090, average rate: 275 kB/s
opos: 26316 MB, time from last successful read: 0 s
Trimming failed blocks...

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Re: After first pass.....

2009-11-25T13:28:45Z

That would be the point of *not* using the -n option, no?

By default it will go through the entire drive and rescue as much as it can, then go back to the trouble spots and split (re-read) them. The -n option tells ddrescue to not do exactly what you are asking about.

--- On Wed, 11/25/09, Al Grant <bigal.nz@...> wrote:

From: Al Grant <bigal.nz@...>
Subject: [Bug-ddrescue] After first pass.....
To: Bug-ddrescue@...
Received: Wednesday, November 25, 2009, 1:12 PM

HI,

After a first pass with options -vn, are there any other tweaks to the
command line options for subsequent passes on the parts with errors to
improve the success of getting data back from the bits that failed the first
time?

Cheers

-Al

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After first pass.....

2009-11-25T10:12:34Z

HI,

After a first pass with options -vn, are there any other tweaks to the command line options for subsequent passes on the parts with errors to improve the success of getting data back from the bits that failed the first time?

Cheers

-Al

Reformat then recover? Flash firmware?

2009-11-20T13:13:37Z

Hi Guys,

I'm having trouble with my 1TB hfs+ formatted mybook studio external drive. Its about a year old, however its had a good bit of use and been carried around alot. It's fallen over twice about a month ago but never been dropped. I left it plugged in whilst I used windows, then I noticed it was making a clicking sound.. The drive spins up fine and can be seen in disk utility, however the drive does not mount.

After finding out about this wonderful tool I tried version 1.10 on a few 10MB chunks at various locations on the drive (50, 250, 500, 750 GB). These all read the entire segment as an error. Ddrescue then proceeded to splitting areas. After a very long time ddrescue exited with no data recovered. I understand this is because the disk is completely illegible and the failed read commands take approximately a second to execute from this thread:

http://www.mail-archive.com/bug-ddrescue@gnu.org/msg00369.html

I also executed ddrescue over the entire disk, this also read the disk as one big error. I also found that there were certain parts of the disk where the drive would start clicking, sometimes this did not stop until I unplugged the data cable from the computer, other times not until I disconnected the power.

An attempted clone with data rescue 3 did start reading some of the data off the disk, it just took very long (which I understand is typical). However when I tried a deep scan, it froze on block 0.

My question is, as my drive suddenly stopped working when I plugged it into windows, and since the clicking sometimes does not stop until I disconnect the power, could my problem be solved by flashing the drive's firmware? Or alternatively, could I try re-formatting the drive then reading? A hfs format takes only seconds so I can't imagine that it's changing much on the drive... However I have read that the process of formatting also identifies and leaves out bad sectors from the partition. But does it reconfigure the drive parameters that exist at the start of the disk, like the read/write arm parameters? Also would it make reading the drive a lot quicker? Would it even be able to format the drive?

I'm a bit puzzled by the behaviour of the drive, I get the idea that most of the time bad sectors appear in limited amounts, i.e. the whole drive won't just suddenly be completely filled with bad sectors like mine.. Unless the read/write head is broken, is that a possibility?

I understand that my drive is most probably completely stuffed, however any suggestions on how to proceed would be appreciated! I'd like to get about 20GB of photos off the end of the drive, however its a loss I'm willing to bear. I'm quite enjoying playing round with it actually :P

Re: On speed

2009-11-17T09:07:24Z

Andrew,

All good points, and when data is what you want your quite right - speed is irrelevant.

Sometimes I image drives for different reasons, and thats why when I can get it speed is great.

My eSATA dock has a power button, so I can cycle the power, but the only way to cycle the eSATA would be plugging/unplugging of the cable.

The eSATA seems to reliably hotswap as long as the BIOS mode is set to AHCI and not IDE.

Incidentially, once you have a disk imaged, with say a few bad sectors missed, other than lots of retries, are there any other switches you can add to the command line to either improve the ability to get all or part of the data on the bad block?

Cheers

-Al

On speed

2009-11-17T06:10:28Z

Regarding the topic of speed of data recovery using GNU ddrescue, I use crappy USB tri-head (ide and sata) interfaces to recover data from failing drives. I can usually get about 12 MB/s top speed and can image a drive in a few hours with that. Although I seldom do.

For example, the drive I am currently doing is a 120 gig 2.5 drive from a Mac. It stopped being detected and the computer would not boot. It was replaced. I got the failed drive to be recognized by patiently power cycling the drive (unplugging and plugging the power cable) until it powered up properly and was recognized. It only needs to get there once after which you don't unplug it again.

I tried imaging the drive and got about 5 gigs over the first hour. I had to reset it about a dozen times during this period (unplug and replug the usb interface; hotplugging). It would shriek and click before it would conk out, a cue that I would pick up on from about thirty feet away. So I would know to drop what I was doing and restart the recovery.

After a few passes, I decided to try the much slower direct mode, which has performed very well. It has been going for almost 14 hours now without any more errors. I reckon the high ratio of error (115 gigs of error out of a 120 gig drive) is due to the high speed since I am reading the parts of the drive that I wasn't able to read at regular speed (with no new errors). Although its rate is currently only 368 Kb/s and if this keeps up, it will take until Friday morning to complete, I don't care about the speed. Or rather, there's nothing I can do about it.

As long as the drive is spitting out data, it's a success. Very few of my customers are under a time crunch that requires the job be done in such a short time anyway.

This phenomenon is not unique to this drive. I find that most of the problematic drives I work on behave like this.

Would I get better rates in direct mode using a more sophisticated interface? I dunno. But there are two show-stoppers that prevent me from exploring that possibility.

The first is cost. I have fried a few components by plugging in my customer's faulty hardware. Data recovery is usually "no data - no charge". So there's no way that I am risking more than a few dollars worth of equipment on questionable hard drives, especially faced with the possibility that these cases are hopeless and therefore I won't get paid.

USB Tri-Head adapters cost less than ten dollars each, including the power supply.

The other problem is the eSATA interface. On the machines on which I have tried an eSATA interface, the problem is that they are not hot-swappable like USB devices. In one case, the drive is not recognized unless it is present at boot time. Since I often need to power cycle the drive several times to get it to "come alive", I would need to reboot the computer each time I power cycle it to get the bios to check to see if it can recognize the drive (the motherboard needs to see it before the kernel can assign a /dev to it.) Annoying.

In another case, the only way to reset the drive was to hit the power button, which would cause the drive to reboot and in many cases, once you get the drive to "come alive" you never want to power it down. A USB interface can be plugged and unplugged without powering off the drive.

So, is there an sSata interface out there that can cycle the eSata interface without powering off and on the drive?

So, I'm all for high speed, but not at the cost of leaving data behind.

Cheers!

Andrew Zajac
AndrewZajac.ca
ubuntu-rescue-remix.org

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SLightly OT (Part Deux)

2009-11-17T00:35:03Z

Apologies again for this being slightly OT, but testdisk, drive geometry and ddrescue seem to go hand in hand.

The following is taken from testdisk on a ddrescue.bin file and shows the partition structure.

Current partition structure:
Partition Start End Size in sectors

1 P FAT16 >32M 0 1 1 6 254 63 112392 [DellUtility]
2 P HPFS - NTFS 7 2 60 1312 109 13 20971520 [RECOVERY]
3 * HPFS - NTFS 1312 109 14 38913 37 36 604055552 [Family]

(a) I assume the Start/End values are CHS values?
(b) If so, isnt C*H*S = block size (ie should be same as size in sectors?

Still struggling to come to terms with drive geometry numbers!!!! All help appreciated.

Regards

-Al

Re: eSATA vs USB bridge

2009-11-16T23:16:47Z

John-385 wrote:

Al Grant wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> Got myself a eSATA HDD docking station (USB bridges are soooo slow).
>
> Thought people might be interested to know that on ddrescue imaging
> operations it starts off high at about 80MB/s, but over the course of
> imaging a 320Gb drive the eSATA averages at about 22MB/s.
>
> USB bridges used to go at about 12MB/s from memory.
>
> FYI.
>
> -Al
>
>
Hey Al,

Which one did you get?

John

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Icy Dock MB881US-1S-1

Heard good things about ThermalTake BlacX too.

-Al

Re: eSATA vs USB bridge

2009-11-16T11:50:22Z

Al Grant wrote:

> Hi All,
>
> Got myself a eSATA HDD docking station (USB bridges are soooo slow).
>
> Thought people might be interested to know that on ddrescue imaging
> operations it starts off high at about 80MB/s, but over the course of
> imaging a 320Gb drive the eSATA averages at about 22MB/s.
>
> USB bridges used to go at about 12MB/s from memory.
>
> FYI.
>
> -Al
>
>

Hey Al,

Which one did you get?

John

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Re: eSATA vs USB bridge

2009-11-16T09:05:14Z

Bugzilla from ant_diaz@teleline.es wrote:

Hello,

Al Grant wrote:
> Thought people might be interested to know that on ddrescue imaging
> operations it starts off high at about 80MB/s, but over the course of
> imaging a 320Gb drive the eSATA averages at about 22MB/s.

Are you using NTFS-3g? If so, it seems Gene Vayngrib already discovered
a solution; switching to ext3
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-ddrescue/2009-06/msg00004.html

Regards,
Antonio.

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Thanks Antonio. Yes I had already seen that message and image off to ext3 drives only.

It is reasonably well documented the speeds of eSATA over USB but I want to find otu for myself.

Regards

-Al

Re: eSATA vs USB bridge

2009-11-16T03:04:26Z

Hello,

Al Grant wrote:
> Thought people might be interested to know that on ddrescue imaging
> operations it starts off high at about 80MB/s, but over the course of
> imaging a 320Gb drive the eSATA averages at about 22MB/s.

Are you using NTFS-3g? If so, it seems Gene Vayngrib already discovered
a solution; switching to ext3
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-ddrescue/2009-06/msg00004.html

Regards,
Antonio.

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Re: Re: badblocks - what data

2009-11-16T00:22:20Z

andrew zajac-2 wrote:

Your drive is made up of 512 byte blocks. Your NTFS filesystem probably is made up of 4096 byte blocks.

Hypothetically, if badblocks tells you that the tenth block is bad, that is not the same as the tenth block in the NTFS filesystem. It would actually fall in the second 4096-byte NTFS block since 4096/512=8.

So, lemme check if I got this clear. A drive has a block size on a physical level (512) and on a logical, or file system level. In the case of NTFS 4096?

I understand blocks at present only in terms of disk geometry in that they are the intersection of a cylander and a sector.

Cheers

-Al

Re: Re: badblocks - what data

2009-11-15T09:27:17Z

Your drive is made up of 512 byte blocks. Your NTFS filesystem probably is made up of 4096 byte blocks.

Hypothetically, if badblocks tells you that the tenth block is bad, that is not the same as the tenth block in the NTFS filesystem. It would actually fall in the second 4096-byte NTFS block since 4096/512=8.

--- On Sun, 11/15/09, BigAl.NZ@... <BigAl.NZ@...> wrote:

From: BigAl.NZ@... <BigAl.NZ@...>
Subject: Re: Re: [Bug-ddrescue] badblocks - what data
To: "andrew zajac" <arzajac@...>
Received: Sunday, November 15, 2009, 12:05 PM

4096 byte blocks?

Why then am I using -b 512 when I do a badblocks command on a NTFS drive? Is that do with clusters (as opposed to blocks?)

Cheers

-Al

On , andrew zajac <arzajac@...> wrote:

> Hi Al.
>
> Use The Sleuth Kit. Specifically, the icat and ifind tools.
>
> Here is an example:
>
> http://ubuntu-rescue-remix.org/node/180
>
> Just make sure you are using the same size blocks. NTFS uses 4096 byte blocks by default.
>
> Cheers!
>
>
> --- On Sun, 11/15/09, Al Grant bigal.nz@...> wrote:
>
> From: Al Grant bigal.nz@...>
> Subject: [Bug-ddrescue] badblocks - what data
> To: Bug-ddrescue@...
> Received: Sunday, November 15, 2009, 3:17 AM
>
>
> Hi Guys,
>
> I know this is slightly OT, but hoping someone here will know the answer. My
> question mainly relates to NTFS disks that are tested under Linux with
> badblocks command.
>
> If you
> find badblocks, is there a way to see if (a) they are on slack space
> and (b) if they are adjacent or in the middle of a file what file.
>
> I assume this could be done by comparing the badblocks with the FAT?MFT or
> similar?
>
> Cheers in advance
>
> -Al
>
> --
> View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/badblocks---what-data-tp26357276p26357276.html
> Sent from the Gnu - ddrescue mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>
>
>
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>
>
>
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Re: badblocks - what data

2009-11-15T04:39:46Z

Hi Al.

Use The Sleuth Kit. Specifically, the icat and ifind tools.

Here is an example:

http://ubuntu-rescue-remix.org/node/180

Just make sure you are using the same size blocks. NTFS uses 4096 byte blocks by default.

Cheers!

--- On Sun, 11/15/09, Al Grant <bigal.nz@...> wrote:

From: Al Grant <bigal.nz@...>
Subject: [Bug-ddrescue] badblocks - what data
To: Bug-ddrescue@...
Received: Sunday, November 15, 2009, 3:17 AM

Hi Guys,

I know this is slightly OT, but hoping someone here will know the answer. My
question mainly relates to NTFS disks that are tested under Linux with
badblocks command.

If you find badblocks, is there a way to see if (a) they are on slack space
and (b) if they are adjacent or in the middle of a file what file.

I assume this could be done by comparing the badblocks with the FAT?MFT or
similar?

Cheers in advance

-Al

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badblocks - what data

2009-11-15T00:17:29Z

Hi Guys,

I know this is slightly OT, but hoping someone here will know the answer. My question mainly relates to NTFS disks that are tested under Linux with badblocks command.

If you find badblocks, is there a way to see if (a) they are on slack space and (b) if they are adjacent or in the middle of a file what file.

I assume this could be done by comparing the badblocks with the FAT?MFT or similar?

Cheers in advance

-Al

eSATA vs USB bridge

2009-11-13T20:37:41Z

Hi All,

Got myself a eSATA HDD docking station (USB bridges are soooo slow).

Thought people might be interested to know that on ddrescue imaging operations it starts off high at about 80MB/s, but over the course of imaging a 320Gb drive the eSATA averages at about 22MB/s.

USB bridges used to go at about 12MB/s from memory.

FYI this is the dock I am using with a mini review : http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=50&topicid=47565

-Al

Re: ddrescue and partition table

2009-11-04T09:46:34Z

Well, you've made a backup of the partition so the partition table on sda is irrelevant. Did the partition table on sbd point sdb1 to the wrong spot? Unlikely.

Your superblock may be messed up. Linux Ext filesystems keep backups of the superblock. Just try to mount the filesystem with one of the backups:

sudo dumpe2fs /dev/sda7|grep superblock

This will list the superblocks. You need to multiply the block size by four to translate from disk blocks (512 bytes) to filesystem blocks (4096 by default). Something along the line also uses 1024 sized blocks so that's why 4 is appropriate. for example:

Backup superblock at 32768, Group descriptors at 32769-32771

32768 * 4 = 131072, so,

andy@andy-desktop:~$ mkdir mnt

andy@andy-desktop:~$ sudo mount -r -o sb=131072 /dev/sda1 mnt

andy@andy-desktop:~$ ls mnt
bin    etc         initrd.img.old mnt   sbin   tmp      vmlinuz.old
boot   home        lib             opt   srv    usr
cdrom initrd      lost+found      proc store var
dev    initrd.img media           root sys    vmlinuz

Use sda7 in your case... I hope this helps.

Andrew Zajac

--- On Wed, 11/4/09, Trio3b <ocki@...> wrote:

From: Trio3b <ocki@...>
Subject: [Bug-ddrescue] ddrescue and partition table
To: Bug-ddrescue@...
Received: Wednesday, November 4, 2009, 1:06 AM

mandriva linux. 40gb hdb (hdb1 34gb, hdb3 3gb) used for backup went bad.
error message "no permissions"., or wrong fs, bad superblock etc.

Moved to new PC with hda. partitioned

hda1 - /
hda6 - /home
hda7 - /resue 42gb specifically to hold hdb1

tried ddrescue -n /dev/hdb1 /dev/hda7 logfile

now hda7 won't mount with same error message of "no permission" or wrong
fs, bad superblock

permissions are given

I believe partition table of hdb is corrupt. Is ddrescue copying bad
partition table from hdb to hda7 so it won't mount?

Any help appreciated
--
View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/ddrescue-and-partition-table-tp26191466p26191466.html
Sent from the Gnu - ddrescue mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

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Re: ddrescue and partition table

2009-11-04T08:56:42Z

Have you tried running testdisk on this troublesome partition to see
what you might learn (and/or correct)?
http://linuxappfinder.com/package/testdisk
It is found on a number of Linux rescue liveCds.
Cheers
Ken

On Tue, 03 Nov 2009 22:06 -0800, "Trio3b" <ocki@...> wrote:

>
> mandriva linux. 40gb hdb (hdb1 34gb, hdb3 3gb) used for backup went bad.
> error message "no permissions"., or wrong fs, bad superblock etc.
>
> Moved to new PC with hda. partitioned
>
> hda1 - /
> hda6 - /home
> hda7 - /resue 42gb specifically to hold hdb1
>
> tried ddrescue -n /dev/hdb1 /dev/hda7 logfile
>
> now hda7 won't mount with same error message of "no permission" or wrong
> fs, bad superblock
>
> permissions are given
>
> I believe partition table of hdb is corrupt. Is ddrescue copying bad
> partition table from hdb to hda7 so it won't mount?
>
> Any help appreciated
> --
> View this message in context:
> http://old.nabble.com/ddrescue-and-partition-table-tp26191466p26191466.html
> Sent from the Gnu - ddrescue mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Bug-ddrescue mailing list
> Bug-ddrescue@...
> http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-ddrescue

--
Ken A Scott
kscott9@...

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ddrescue and partition table

2009-11-03T22:04:10Z

mandriva linux. 40gb hdb (hdb1 34gb, hdb3 3gb) used for backup went bad. error message "no permissions"., or wrong fs, bad superblock etc.

Moved to new PC with hda. partitioned

hda1 - /
hda6 - /home
hda7 - /resue 42gb specifically to hold hdb1

tried ddrescue -n /dev/hdb1 /dev/hda7 logfile

now hda7 won't mount with same error message of "no permission" or wrong fs, bad superblock

permissions are given

I believe partition table of hdb is corrupt. Is ddrescue copying bad partition table from hdb to hda7 so it won't mount?

Any help appreciated

Re: Disk 2 Disk (Part Deux)

2009-10-30T16:35:43Z

> 1) When going disk to disk can you image both the whole drive and all its
> partitions or can you only go disk to disk on a partition by partition
> basis?
>

>You can do whatever you want. On a practical level, it depends on what your problem is.

Hi Andrew,

Thanks for replying - your replies are always pretty good.

The scenario I am thinking of is a drive with some bad sectors and one partition containing Windows XP (NTFS).

By ddrescue disk-disk, then once on the new disk I can run a repair installation and hey presto I have a new disk with a now booting installation of XP.

In most cases the partition table is not affected.

Sound feeasble?

I cant think why I would want to image a single partition, but If I wanted to image /dev/sda1 to a new blank disk, wouldnt I have to first create that partiton, with the correct size, file system type etc first?

Cheers

-Al
PS: I had no problem using dd to write a ddresuce .bin to a new disk.

Re: Disk 2 Disk (Part Deux)

2009-10-29T04:53:22Z

Hi Al.

--- On Thu, 10/29/09, Marian Csontos <mcsontos@...> wrote:

Is this ext2 or ext3? Does not matter, as it would not work for either.
Your disks use 1KiB blocks, and according to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ext2 max.allowed file size is 16GB :-(

No. Ext3 uses 4096 byte blocks by default. The theoretical max file size is 4TB.

Use tune2fs -l to list the attributes of your ext filesystem.

So, yes Al, you will be able to image that drive onto your linux partition.

> 1) When going disk to disk can you image both the whole drive and all its
> partitions or can you only go disk to disk on a partition by partition
> basis?
>

You can do whatever you want. On a practical level, it depends on what your problem is.

If the partition table of the bad drive is still intact and you can see the partitions on the drive, you can image a partition by itself. Whether you image it to a file or directly to another drive is irrelevant. However, if you are imaging a single partition, you probably want to image it to another partition and not to the whole destination drive. So you would partition the target (destination) drive and image, say the bad drive's partition number one (sda1) to the destination drive's partition one (sdb1). There would be little point in imaging sda1 to sdb (raw block device) if the destination drive is larger than the source (bad drive) since you will not be able to use that space.

You may just as well image it to a file on the partitioned and formatted destination drive. That way, you don't have to repartition your destination drive. You just create one filesystem and don't worry about the extra space - it will still just be there one you are done.

If the partition table (first block) of the bad drive is unreadable, then you can't access any individual partitions - well, you can figure out where they are supposed to be and then just image that, but why bother? It's just more straightforward to image the whole drive. Again, you can image it to a file and then mount the partitions on the image file as loop devices or you can image the whole drive to another destination whole drive.

If you image the whole source (bad) drive to one partition on the destination drive, then, once you are done, you need to go through the process of mounting the partition as a loop device and using an offset since there is not supposed to be a partition table at the beginning of a partition. I find it more straightforward to just image it as a file and go from there.

I just image everything to a file. If (for kicks and giggles) I wanted to image directly to another drive, I would probably just do drive to drive (example: sda to sdb) or partition to partition (example sda2 to sdb1) depending on what I need. Although you can do it, I don't see the point of imaging raw drive to partition (sda to sdb1) or partition to raw drive (sda1 to sdb) - there's fewer steps and less thinking/guessing involved in just imaging to file in those cases.

It's like jazz. There's no wrong moves, just choices that are less appealing than others.

Cheers!

Re: Disk 2 Disk (Part Deux)

2009-10-29T02:20:42Z

On 10/27/2009 08:32 PM, Al Grant wrote:

> I know it has been partly covered in posts before. But I never felt I had
> enough info to copy disk to disk.
>
> I have a spare disk here I thought I would give it a go with. The disk is a
> :
>
> Hitachi 100Gb 2.5
>
> My disks are as follows:
>
> al@al-ubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk -l
>
> Disk /dev/sda: 250.0 GB, 250059350016 bytes
> 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
> Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
> Disk identifier: 0xaf010487
>
> Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
> /dev/sda1 * 1 30401 244196001 83 Linux
>

Is this ext2 or ext3? Does not matter, as it would not work for either.
Your disks use 1KiB blocks, and according to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ext2 max.allowed file size is 16GB :-(

> Disk /dev/sdb: 100.0 GB, 100030242816 bytes
> 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 12161 cylinders
> Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
> Disk identifier: 0xeed6ce43
>
> Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
> /dev/sdb1 * 1 12136 97482388+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
> al@al-ubuntu:~$
>
> The 250Gb is my main linux drive and the 100Gb is the Hitachi. I have not
> yet added another 2.5" drive to image to.
>
> In fact for safetys sake I will image the 100Gb drive in its entirety to my
> main linux drive (sda). This does raise my first question though:
>
> 1) When going disk to disk can you image both the whole drive and all its
> partitions or can you only go disk to disk on a partition by partition
> basis?
>

IMO it should work just fine, they are just block devices.

> Off to copy the disk now:
>
> al@al-ubuntu:~$ sudo ddrescue -vn /dev/sdb /home/al/rhonda.bin rhonda.log
>
>
> About to copy 100030 MBytes from /dev/sdb to /home/al/rhonda.bin
> Starting positions: infile = 0 B, outfile = 0 B
> Copy block size: 128 hard blocks
> Hard block size: 512 bytes
> Max_retries: 0
> Direct: no Sparse: no Split: no Truncate: no
>
> Press Ctrl-C to interrupt
> Initial status (read from logfile)
> rescued: 0 B, errsize: 0 B, errors: 0
> Current status
> rescued: 2653 MB, errsize: 0 B, current rate: 39845 kB/s
> ipos: 2653 MB, errors: 0, average rate: 37903 kB/s
> opos: 2653 MB, time from last successful read: 0 s
> Copying non-tried blocks...
>

Notice only 2.6GB was copied (or I misunderstand the output.)

BTW, it is recommended to unmount any partitions on the device being
copied beforehand.

> Look forward to any replies on what I need to do to write rhonda.bin off to
> a new unformatted disk.
>
If /dev/sdc is your new disk, then try following:

sudo ddrescue -vn /home/al/rhonda.bin /dev/sdc

It should recreate the same structure on the new disk, so it is useless
to format the device, but this would leave unused free space, if new
disk is of different size.

Cheers,

-- Marian

> TIA
>
> -Al
>
>

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Disk 2 Disk (Part Deux)

2009-10-27T12:32:44Z

I know it has been partly covered in posts before. But I never felt I had enough info to copy disk to disk.

I have a spare disk here I thought I would give it a go with. The disk is a :

Hitachi 100Gb 2.5

My disks are as follows:

al@al-ubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 250.0 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xaf010487

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 30401 244196001 83 Linux

Disk /dev/sdb: 100.0 GB, 100030242816 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 12161 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xeed6ce43

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 12136 97482388+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
al@al-ubuntu:~$

The 250Gb is my main linux drive and the 100Gb is the Hitachi. I have not yet added another 2.5" drive to image to.

In fact for safetys sake I will image the 100Gb drive in its entirety to my main linux drive (sda). This does raise my first question though:

1) When going disk to disk can you image both the whole drive and all its partitions or can you only go disk to disk on a partition by partition basis?

Off to copy the disk now:

al@al-ubuntu:~$ sudo ddrescue -vn /dev/sdb /home/al/rhonda.bin rhonda.log

About to copy 100030 MBytes from /dev/sdb to /home/al/rhonda.bin
Starting positions: infile = 0 B, outfile = 0 B
Copy block size: 128 hard blocks
Hard block size: 512 bytes
Max_retries: 0
Direct: no Sparse: no Split: no Truncate: no

Press Ctrl-C to interrupt
Initial status (read from logfile)
rescued: 0 B, errsize: 0 B, errors: 0
Current status
rescued: 2653 MB, errsize: 0 B, current rate: 39845 kB/s
ipos: 2653 MB, errors: 0, average rate: 37903 kB/s
opos: 2653 MB, time from last successful read: 0 s
Copying non-tried blocks...

Look forward to any replies on what I need to do to write rhonda.bin off to a new unformatted disk.

TIA

-Al

Re: ddrescue recognizes partition but not whole drive

2009-10-15T08:30:02Z

Hello,

Ian Solecki wrote:
> First let me thank you as many have before for ddrescue - it is a delightful
> tool.

You are welcome. :-)

> SO - given all of this I am wondering if there is somehow a way to get/trick
> ddrescue to start at the very end of the /sdc1 partition and just continue
> its way into the rest of the drive? Or perhaps I am doing something wrong
> in what I have described here? I have tried running ddrescue with simply
> /dev/sdc as the input but I receive an input/output error. It runs on
> /dev/sdc1 but won't allow me to -i any further than the end of the
> partition.

If /dev/sdc2 is not recognized by the kernel, I guess you can only try
/dev/sdc with an -i value equal to the starting position of partition 2.

Regards,
Antonio.

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ddrescue recognizes partition but not whole drive

2009-10-13T16:03:06Z

Hello there,

First let me thank you as many have before for ddrescue - it is a delightful tool.

I have a dying (perhaps dead?) 250gb hard drive with two partitions on it. I was able to read the large partition (about 180gb) in Windows (mostly) but not the smaller (about 60gb) one, so I tried ddrescue on the smaller one first (more important files there). I was able to image the smaller partition and rescue all of my files from the image with resounding success.

Now, a few days later, I turn my attention to the larger partition. Unfortunately, the larger partition no longer appears to be recognized by ddrescue.

The entire drive (/dev/sdc) is listed in /proc/partitions with its full 250gb size, as is the smaller partition (/dev/sdc1) with its 60gb. However, a "fsarchiver probe simple" reveals only /dev/sdc1, the smaller partition.

Testdisk can find no trace of /sdc at all. Nor can Gparted, so I can't resize the smaller partition to contain the entire disk.

Interestingly, the GetDataBack program in Windows is able to identify the large partition and read some data from it, but it encounters endless errors that simply slow it down too much to be practical.

It may well be that this larger partition is now beyond salvageable, possibly due to the amount of usage the disk received while I was rescuing the other partition (ddrescue took about 20 hours, although I think that was my fault for copying to a USB drive).

SO - given all of this I am wondering if there is somehow a way to get/trick ddrescue to start at the very end of the /sdc1 partition and just continue its way into the rest of the drive? Or perhaps I am doing something wrong in what I have described here? I have tried running ddrescue with simply /dev/sdc as the input but I receive an input/output error. It runs on /dev/sdc1 but won't allow me to -i any further than the end of the partition.

Any thoughts you may have are greatly appreciated! Should your only thought be "nope, you're completely screwed" then I suppose that's that... maybe I'll try the freezer :S

Cheers,
Ian Solecki
isolecki@...

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Re: Advice on rescuing LaCie Big Disk

2009-10-07T03:01:14Z

Hello,

Manca Weeks wrote:
> first and foremost - THANK YOU - for creating ddrescue. Me and many of
> my customers are eternally indebted to you.
> Let me know if there is a way for us to donate funds to the project.

I am very glad to know ddrescue helped you to save your data. :-)

You can donate via PayPal here
https://www.paypal.com/xclick/business=ant_diaz%40teleline.es&no_note=1&tax=0¤cy_code=EUR.
Thank you very much for contributing a donation to the project.

> I have successfully recovered many drives using ddrescue before, but all
> were on single drives, so the process was quite simple. I operate mainly
> in the GUI of OS X so I am only familiar with basic unix concepts and
> commands.

I have no experience with OS X, so I can't improve the advice given by
Andrew Zajac. But I'll answer any question if I know the answer.

Best regards,
Antonio.

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Re: Advice on rescuing LaCie Big Disk (this is not a bug report nor contribution, respond only if willing)

2009-10-06T04:36:42Z

Hi Manca.

What does the partition table on one of the drives look like? I don't quite know what you mean by "I am imaging the Apple HFS part of the healthy drive in the RAID". I am assuming that this array is striped and not mirrored, which means that you would need both drives to use the array (you need to assemble the array into one block device and then mount the filesystem on it).

If you are able to image both drives, then everything should work out. Image them however you want - to separate drives or as two big files on one big drive. Assuming the array is not corrupt, you will be able to mount the filesystem on no matter where the image is. If you have another drive and make a perfect image of the original disk and plug it into the enclosure, it will probably work. If not, you can always assign the partitions on the images to loop devices and then use mdadm to assemble the array using the loop devices (on Linux - don't know about OS X.)

Cheers!

Andrew Zajac

From: Manca Weeks <manca@...>
To: bug-ddrescue@...
Sent: Monday, October 5, 2009 9:52:01 PM
Subject: [Bug-ddrescue] Advice on rescuing LaCie Big Disk (this is not a bug report nor contribution, respond only if willing)

Hi,

first and foremost - THANK YOU - for creating ddrescue. Me and many of my customers are eternally indebted to you.
Let me know if there is a way for us to donate funds to the project.

I have a LaCie Big Disk with one drive working (I believe the RAID scheme is striped and hardware based). I will try to swap the drive board (don't know the proper handle -the chip that interfaces between the drive hardware and the ATA interface) from the working drive to the non-working drive after I have made an image of the one that works since the drives are identical.
It sounds (from my other drive rescuing experiences) like a drive with a power issue, not a mechanical problem. So I hope switching the board will allow me to grab the data from the other drive without too much trouble.

I have successfully recovered many drives using ddrescue before, but all were on single drives, so the process was quite simple. I operate mainly in the GUI of OS X so I am only familiar with basic unix concepts and commands.

I have another suitable healthy drive I may be able to use to attach to the BigDIsk hardware in place of the damaged one, but I am uncertain about how to properly duplicate the RAIDed data to the replacement drive. The model is only slightly different and the manufacturing date is merely months apart, same size. I would like to figure out a way to fool the RAID hardware to not notice the drive swap.

Right now I am imaging the Apple HFS part of the healthy drive in the RAID, I am uncertain where the RAID data is kept - I assume within the HFS partition, but I realize I could be completely wrong.

If you are willing to help, please respond and I will provide whatever additional details you need to help me figure this out.

If there is an existing thread, forum or any other resource detailing a case like this, please direct me to it. This is a bit deeper than my usual web searches, so I am not at home finding the information.

I am eternally grateful for ddrescue as is and will not be offended if you have better things to do than help a newbie.

Thanks for your hard work.

Manca Weeks

http://overnightmac.com
888-308-9603

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Advice on rescuing LaCie Big Disk (this is not a bug report nor contribution, respond only if willing)

2009-10-05T18:52:01Z

Hi,

first and foremost - THANK YOU - for creating ddrescue. Me and many
of my customers are eternally indebted to you.
Let me know if there is a way for us to donate funds to the project.

I have a LaCie Big Disk with one drive working (I believe the RAID
scheme is striped and hardware based). I will try to swap the drive
board (don't know the proper handle -the chip that interfaces between
the drive hardware and the ATA interface) from the working drive to
the non-working drive after I have made an image of the one that
works since the drives are identical.
It sounds (from my other drive rescuing experiences) like a drive
with a power issue, not a mechanical problem. So I hope switching the
board will allow me to grab the data from the other drive without too
much trouble.

I have successfully recovered many drives using ddrescue before, but
all were on single drives, so the process was quite simple. I operate
mainly in the GUI of OS X so I am only familiar with basic unix
concepts and commands.

I have another suitable healthy drive I may be able to use to attach
to the BigDIsk hardware in place of the damaged one, but I am
uncertain about how to properly duplicate the RAIDed data to the
replacement drive. The model is only slightly different and the
manufacturing date is merely months apart, same size. I would like to
figure out a way to fool the RAID hardware to not notice the drive
swap.

Right now I am imaging the Apple HFS part of the healthy drive in the
RAID, I am uncertain where the RAID data is kept - I assume within
the HFS partition, but I realize I could be completely wrong.

If you are willing to help, please respond and I will provide
whatever additional details you need to help me figure this out.

If there is an existing thread, forum or any other resource detailing
a case like this, please direct me to it. This is a bit deeper than
my usual web searches, so I am not at home finding the information.

I am eternally grateful for ddrescue as is and will not be offended
if you have better things to do than help a newbie.

Thanks for your hard work.

Manca Weeks

http://overnightmac.com
888-308-9603

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