![]() In this example, we are going to image the whole Windows8 drive in the laptop to an image file stored on the attached USB hard drive. Be aware, that if you have multiple drives installed, it is possible that these designations can change after a reboot so be sure to double check before you proceed. /dev/sdb, which is my attached USB drive and contains a single partition: /dev/sdb1Īt this point you will want to make note of the name of the drive or partition that you want to rescue, and the name of the drive where you want to store the image.This is the Windows8 drive installed in the laptop. /dev/sda, which contains two partitions: /dev/sda1 and /dev/sda2.In Parted magic, you will get something like this (from my guinea pig laptop)Īs you can see, there are two hard disks attached: If you want to see a list of the block devices currently attached to your system, run this command: If, on the other hand, you intend to rescue the whole drive, replace the failing drive, and re-image then certainly image the whole drive so you get the MBR, etc. If you just need to recover files from a Windows partition, it is advisable to only image that particular partition (as opposed to the entire disk). Or, we may just need to image a single partition (say /dev/sda2). For instance, /dev/sda1 is the first partition on the first hardrive, /dev/sda2 the second partition on the first drive, and so on.įor our purposes, this is relevant because we may want to image the complete drive (say /dev/sda), which includes everything (MBR, partition table, all partitions). Furthermore, the partitions on a particular drive are represented by incremental numbers. So, the first recognized device will be /dev/sd a, the second will be /dev/sd b and so on. Hard drives are usually denoted with the “sd” prefix, followed by an incremental alphabetical designation, beginning with “a”. These devices are represented as files within the /dev directory. Part 1 – Creating an Image from a Failing Diskįirstly, a refresher on how unix/linux names block devices (hard drives, usb drives, cdroms, etc). If you run linux on your test bench machine and prefer to attach the failing drives to it, this guide will give you the basics, but obviously the screenshots will be different. I usually PXE boot (or boot from a live CD) the machine that I am working on to Parted Magic for this purpose. In will be using Parted Magic as a platform for this guide. Part 2: Restoring an image to a new disk & cloning directly to a new disk Part 1: Creating an image from a failing disk I plan on doing this in 3 parts to cover the most common scenarios. ![]() So, I’ve decided to document some real-world examples from in the shop. It seems that a guide for using ddrescue might be of some benefit to many members who may be shy of the linux terminal. Technibble and SilverLeaf take no responsibility for the loss of any data, business, reputation etc. Some paid software is more straight forward than the steps here, but this is a great way to get the job done for free. This guide is fairly technical requiring you to deal with the Linux command line. This guide is intended for people who are looking to do quality data recovery using free tools. I would prefer not to have to restore it as it is just a Windows partition and the only thing I want to recover is some folders from the User and a pst from the default outlook store location.This guide was written by one of our forum members SilverLeaf and was originally written as a forum post. I have read too that the utility TestDisk should be able to read a disk image. If you use ddrescue to create an image of the hda2 partition, which will be the approximate size of the image? Will it be 400GB or will its size be only the 150GB used space?Īnd once the image is created which is the best tool to see its contents without restoring it? I'm confused about that either as for what I read looks like you should be able to mount it but I tried with a small NTFS partition with no luck. The 400GB partition has 150GB used and 250GB free. So, let's say you have a 500GB disk (hda) with two partitions 100GB (hda1) and 400GB (hda2). And if I understand it correctly you can use ddrescue to create a image file of a drive or a partition too.Īnd what I haven't been able to figure out reading manual is the size of the image. If I understand it ddrescue can be used to clone directly a whole drive to another drive of same or greater size or a partition to other equal or greater same type partition. Chances are the hardware is not damaged but before trying any other thing that could damage the HDD more in case it is damaged I'm going to clone the data. I'm trying to fully understand ddrescue before using it to decide which is the best strategy to recover the most from a maybe damaged HDD.
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