Suggestions for disk data recovery software

[Jason Sauders]

You'll want to use gddrescue (which uses the ddrescue command) as suggested
by Liam above. Regular DD will fail the entire process once it hits a bad
sector. I typically use the -r3 command so it retries 3 times before it
writes a 0 and moves on.

After that, PhotoRec will be your best friend. TestDisk is more for
recovering partitions, not actual data (as per my understanding anyway).

A while back I had a critical data recovery to do for somebody. I came home
with a Windows laptop, Mac laptop, and Ubuntu laptop. I didn't care what
worked - I just needed something that was going to do the job. Out of the
25-or-so recovery applications I used, PhotoRec was by far the best tool.
PhotoRec's downside comes in with the fact it works below the file system,
and thus cannot detect file names (however the fact it works lower level is
why its success rate is higher). That's why recovered items show up as a
letter with a random string of numbers, then the extension (such as
f283494892.jpg). In the case of pictures, this really doesn't matter.

Take a gddrescue image, then PhotoRec the heck out of the image. That's
your best chance. In my case I gddrescue'd the drive to a second working
drive and used that as my target.

Good luck!
-J

On Tue, Feb 16, 2016 at 8:39 AM, Karl Auer <kauer at biplane.com.au> wrote:

> On Tue, 2016-02-16 at 07:27 -0600, Linda wrote:
> > My daughters windows lap top hard drive that had sudden
> > failure. Am hoping to recover some recent photos of my
> > grandson that had not been backed up yet. I stuck it in a
> > external case and and ran PhotoRec I am now trying testdisk
> > any other suggestions for what I should use.
>
> Stop.
>
> Use dd to take an image of the disk partition. You can do this
> regardless of what OS created the partition.
>
> Then work with the image, not the disk. Continuing to use the disk risks
> causing further damage.
>
> If the data is truly precious, send the disk to a professional recovery
> firm. They have tools not at your disposal.
>
> Regards, K.
>
> --
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Karl Auer (kauer at biplane.com.au)
> http://www.biplane.com.au/kauer
> http://twitter.com/kauer389
>
> GPG fingerprint: E00D 64ED 9C6A 8605 21E0 0ED0 EE64 2BEE CBCB C38B
> Old fingerprint: 3C41 82BE A9E7 99A1 B931 5AE7 7638 0147 2C3C 2AC4
>
>
>
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