Re: [PLUG] Need to recover an external HD

["Gavin W. Burris" <bug@sas.upenn.edu>]

Yes, definitely do a disk image, then work on the disk image.  I like
using ddrescue, which will attempt to read the whole block device
bit-by-bit, log any errors, then attempt to re-read the failed sectors.
 Highly recommended.  You might want to try placing the bare disk in a
new enclosure as well, if you can't even see the drive.

Cheers.

On 10/13/2011 07:47 AM, sean finney wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 12, 2011 at 11:12:33PM -0400, Amul Shah wrote:
>> My father-in-law unplugged his external USB drive from his Windows laptop without unmounting it ("Remove Hardware" in Windows parlance). Now every time he tries to plug it back in Windows says that he needs to reformat it.
>>
>> It's been years since I've had to recover a HD and I haven't the slightest idea what tools to use. I don't know if the disk is formatted with NTFS or FAT. I'll have his Windows laptop and my Linux box available to run a recovery. Any pointers on software recovery tools are appreciated.
> 
> assuming it was a software/user failure (i.e. corrupted because unsafely
> removed, and not just badly timed hdd hardware failure), you should
> take a disk image of the drive with dd before doing anything that might
> twiddle with bits on the device.
> 
> In linux land, you can then make a second copy of the image file, set up
> a loopback block device with it + losetup(8), and try all the things
> you'd otherwise be scared of trying with it.  I imagine that some
> windows utilities might have a way of working with an image file
> instead of the actual partition too.
> 
> 
> 	sean
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-- 
Gavin W. Burris
Senior Systems Programmer
Information Security and Unix Systems
School of Arts and Sciences
University of Pennsylvania
___________________________________________________________________________
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