Recommendations for drive recovery

[Amos Shapira]

Mounting the partition could add a lot of unnecessary disk access and could
hang the system.

It's true that scanning the whole partition accesses every block on it as
opposed to the filesystem code knowing where the data really is, but the OP
seemed to suggest that the partition is pretty full, so a read will require
access to most blocks anyway.

Also a full image of the filesystem makes it easier to test multiple ways
to recover data, for instance - make a copy of the rescued partition image
then try difference "fsck"'s and executions of PhotoRec (
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec).


On 24 December 2014 at 02:31, E.S. Rosenberg <esr+linux-il at g.jct.ac.il>
wrote:

> I have used the same trick with success at least once, it working does
> depend on the type of failure but yours sounds like the type that would
> work, in my case I think I even mounted the partitions and just copied the
> data..... (rsync iirc)
>
> 2014-12-22 12:26 GMT+02:00 Amos Shapira <amos.shapira at gmail.com>:
>
>> I once helped a friend in a similar situation (family photos and
>> documents on a dying disk without backups).
>>
>> I followed broadly the following procedure:
>> 1. Put the disk in an airtight plastic bag (reason - to avoid humidity
>> getting in during the following steps).
>> 2. Put in the freezer for an hour.
>> 3. Remove from freezer and leave inside the bag for a few minutes (again
>> - to minimise risk of condensation).
>> 4. remove from the bag, make sure no condensation builds up on it, wrap
>> in a kitchen towel (it was Sydney summer, so high temps and humid, though
>> not like Tel-Aviv summer). The idea was to keep any humidity away.
>> 4. Put it on a block of icepack, and another icepack on top of it.
>> 5. Connect it to a comp through an external USB box
>> 6. GNU ddrescue (don't confuse with the non-GNU implementation). It can
>> keep track of where it got to in a previous run so you can pick up from
>> there.
>> 7. Rinse, repeat.
>>
>> It took 2-3 weeks of repeating this process but I managed to save all his
>> data (I think it was half a tera or so) except a tiny part (single-digit
>> kilobytes, I think).
>>
>> The extra twist was that it was a Mac HFS file system and he wanted the
>> data accessible to Windows - Only Linux could be used to support both
>> filesystem formats :)
>>
>>
>> On 22 December 2014 at 16:15, Alon Barzilai <alon at skylinesoft.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>  Hi,
>>>
>>> there is tic tac  ( http://www.tictac.co.il )
>>> and recover (http://recover.co.il)
>>>
>>> I used them both in the past. and they both offered good service, but
>>> this service is not cheap.
>>> tic tac ares in this field for longer time, but as I recall their price
>>> is higher than recover.
>>>
>>> Alon.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 12/21/2014 11:46 PM, Geoff Shang wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> We have a 500 GB external USB drive that's about 5 or so years old
>>> (can't remember exactly when we got it).  It's now not spinning up
>>> propperly and we figure its days are numbered.
>>>
>>> Much of what is on it has not been backed up anywhere else (yes, I
>>> know).
>>>
>>> Is there somewhere I can take/send it to see if anything can be
>>> salvaged?
>>>
>>> Geoff.
>>>
>>>
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>>>
>>>
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>>
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>>
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>


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