Ddrescue For Windows 7

I am currently working with a 700 GB Seagate hard drive that's beginning to fail. I'll call this 'SDB' from now on. I'd like to clone it while I'm still able to.

However, the only hard drive that I have available is a 500 GB WD hard drive. I'll call this 'SDC' from now on.

The partition scheme on SDB is as follows: 9.77 GB is allocated to a recovery partition and the remaining 688.87 GB is allocated to a Windows partition. Both are formatted using NTFS.

There is no partition scheme on SDC.

I know how to clone one hard drive to another using DDRescue but I've only done it using hard drives that are the same size. For your reference, I'll normally use the command 'ddrescue -v -r 3 /dev/sdb /dev/sdc example.log'.

Sep 11, 2018  ddrescue is a raw disk imaging tool that 'copies data from one file or block device to another, trying hard to rescue data in case of read errors.' The application is developed as part of the GNU project and has written with UNIX/Linux in mind. Guide to Using DDRescue to Recover Data. This guide was written by one of our forum members SilverLeaf and was originally written as a forum post. This guide is intended for people who are looking to do quality data recovery using free tools. Dec 08, 2016  Windows 7 Forums is the largest help and support community, providing friendly help and advice for Microsoft Windows 7 Computers such as Dell, HP, Acer, Asus or a custom build.

I'd like to know if it's possible to do this with DDRescue. I've read the manual from GNU (http://www.gnu.org/software/ddrescue/manual/ddrescue_manual.html) and I haven't seen anything indicating that it is possible.

I'm just looking for some confirmation that this is a correct impression. If it's not possible, then it would be helpful if any of y'all would be able to make some work around suggestions. But please don't feel obligated to do that. I don't want to have my one thread bogged down with two many questions.

2 Answers

If you suspect this disk is on it's way out, your first priority should be to get the most important data off it imediatly, NOT trying to repair it or clone it. Again, don't try to clone it, but strategically attempt to move the most important data somehwere safe first, then go after the less important data later.

Attempting to clone the drive could not only result in catastrophic failure, but if the disk fails 99% of the way in duriong a clone attempt, not only is the disk now dead, but your image of the disc will most likley be worthless.

The beauty of this tool is that if there is a file on a bad sector, it'll keep on truckin' and not abort the whole process. Windows has a bad habit of aborting the whole operation if a file half way can't be read.

This way you can get the most important data first, and then get the other stuff. If by some miracle the disk survives this, try using imagex to capture an image, it's a filesystem based imaging tool, not a sector based imaging tool, you may have some luck.

Why not try Drive Image XML? It is much simpler and works with drives of different sizes.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged windows-7windowslinuxhard-drive or ask your own question.

ddrescue is a raw disk imaging tool that 'copies data from one file or block device to another, trying hard to rescue data in case of read errors.' The application is developed as part of the GNU project and has written with UNIX/Linux in mind.

ddrescue and dd_rescue are completely different programs which share no development between them. The two projects are not related in any way except that they both attempt to enhance the standard dd tool and coincidentally chose similar names for their new programs.

From the ddrescue info pages:

GNU ddrescue is a data recovery tool. It copies data from one file or block device (hard disc, cdrom, etc) to another, trying hard to rescue data in case of read errors.

Ddrescue does not truncate the output file if not asked to. So, every time you run it on the same output file, it tries to fill in the gaps.

The basic operation of ddrescue is fully automatic. That is, you don't have to wait for an error, stop the program, read the log, run it in reverse mode, etc.

If you use the logfile feature of ddrescue, the data is rescued very efficiently (only the needed blocks are read). Also you can interrupt the rescue at any time and resume it later at the same point.

Automatic merging of backups: If you have two or more damaged copies of a file, cdrom, etc, and run ddrescue on all of them, one at a time, with the same output file, you will probably obtain a complete and error-free file. This is so because the probability of having damaged areas at the same places on different input files is very low. https://ivuptaci1980.mystrikingly.com/blog/nik-software-silver-efex-pro-v1-0-serial. Usingthe logfile, only the needed blocks are read from the second and successive copies.

• 1Installation
• 2Partition recovery
• 6Complimentary Tools

Installation

Bootable CD

ddrescue is available on bootable Linux distributions such as SystemRescueCd.

Debian and Ubuntu

The package 'ddrescue' in Debian and Ubuntu is actually dd_rescue, another dd-like program which does not maintain a recovery log. The correct package is gddrescue.

Debian

Ubuntu

Gentoo

Partition recovery

Kernel 2.6.3+ & ddrescue 1.4+

ddrescue --direct will open the input with the O_DIRECT option for uncached reads. 'raw devices' are not needed on newer kernels. For older kernels see below.

First you copy as much data as possible, without retrying or splitting sectors:

Now let it retry previous errors 3 times, using uncached reads:

If that fails you can try again but retrimmed, so it tries to reread full sectors:

You can now use ddrescue (or normal dd) to copy the imagefile to a new partition on a new disk. Use the appropriate filesystem checkers (fsck, CHKDSK) to try to fix errors caused by the bad blocks. Be sure to keep the imagefile around. Just in case the filesystem is severely broken, and datacarving tools like testdisk need to to be used on the original image.

Before linux kernel 2.6.3 / 2.4.x

In 2.6.3 the 'raw device' has been marked obsolete. On later kernels ddrescue will use O_DIRECT on the input to do uncached reads.

First you copy as much data as possible, without retrying or splitting sectors:

Now change over to raw device access. Let it retry previous errors 3 times, don't read past last block in logfile:

If that fails you can try again (still using raw) but retrimmed, so it tries to reread full sectors:

You can now use ddrescue (or normal dd) to copy the imagefile to a new partition on a new disk. Use the appropriate filesystem checkers (fsck, CHKDSK) to try to fix errors caused by the bad blocks. Be sure to keep the imagefile around. Just in case the filesystem is severely broken, and datacarving tools like testdisk need to to be used on the original image.

At the end you may want to unbind the raw device:

Examples

These two examples are taken directly from the ddrescue info pages. Zapf chancery italic font.

Example 1: Rescue an ext2 partition in /dev/hda2 to /dev/hdb2

Please Note: This will overwrite ALL data on the partition you are copying to. If you do not want to do that, rather create an image of the partition to be rescued.

Example 2: Rescue a CD-ROM in /dev/cdrom

Example 3: Rescue an entire hard disk /dev/sda to another disk /dev/sdb

Copy the error free areas first

Attempt to recover any bad sectors

Options

Numbers may be followed by a multiplier: b = blocks, k = kB = 10^3 = 1000, Ki = KiB = 2^10 = 1024, M = 10^6, Mi = 2^20, G = 10^9, Gi = 2^30, etc..

Cygwin

As of release 1.4-rc1, it can be compiled directly in CygwinOut of the Box. Precompiled packages are available in the Cygwin distribution. This makes it usable natively on Windows systems.

Program To Open Ddrescue

Complimentary Tools

ddrescueview

Ddrescue For Windows 7 7

ddrescueview is a graphical tool to display the mapfile created by ddrescue. It can help to understand the state of the drive, and the status of the imaging process.

Ddrescue Commands

ddrutility

ddrutility is a set of tools designed to be used with ddrescue to perform some more advanced functions, such as identifying which files are affected by bad sectors, or allowing a selective image to be taken of only the used areas of the disk. These are more designed for data recovery than forensics, but could be useful when dealing with badly damaged media.

See also

Download Ddrescue