Recovery from ext-4

[Sandy Harris]

I had a hard disk fail, first many errors during boot then complete
refusal to boot
with an error message about not finding /sbin/init.

That drive is now in an external case, machine has a new disk. However, I'd
like to get back files from the old one.

There was a backup on a USB stick, but that is borked as well. I bought the
stick very cheaply from a Chinese street vendor. Dumb! Now both Linux
and Windows see the disk and the one directory I backed up to, and both
report about the right amount of disk space as used (9 of 32 G), but none
of the files under that directory are visible in either system.

I've run magicrescue against both the disk and the USB stick, and that has
got back some MS Office files. However, most of the files I need back are
Open Office formats, PDF or TeX and magicrescue has no built-in recipes
for those. Before I attempt to write my own, has anyone got some?

Since the USB was formatted FAT32 on a Windows box, but the disk utility
on the system menu now says it has no partitions, I'm now trying gpart
against the USB to see what it says.

The man page for gpart does not mention ext4, and the hard drive was
formatted with that, so I am not sure what to do there once I've got all
magicrescue can give me.

I do have enough spare disk space to dd the whole drive into a file, but
then what?

Suggestions?