OOPS, I had not read the comments on that page so disregard Question 1 below. However, having done so also showed another alternative which sounds good;
http://www.gnu.org/software/ddrescue/ddrescue.html
and now I REALLY have to go.
On 11/30/06, Patrick Fleming, EA <plug@rwcinc.net> wrote:-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
If you are just trying to copy the data from a failing drive to a good
drive, dd_rescue is a pretty decent tool. It's on Knoppix, should be on
other live cds. dd_rescue works even when dd fails.
1) Having never seen this I wondered if it worked differently than using the "noerror" option to dd which makes it not stop on errors. But then I presumed dd still writes an output block. Does anyone know if that is true?
2) I was intriguged so loaded Knoppix 5 to look at it. There was no man page, but dd_rescue --help gave enough info to intrigue me. So I did a web search and found http://www.garloff.de/kurt/linux/ddrescue/ which is the author's site for it. I also found http://www.oreillynet.com/sysadmin/blog/2004/07/save_your_data_from_the_click.html which mentions a front end for dd_rescue that sounds intriging. Unfortunately the link in the article does not work, but http://www.kalysto.org/utilities/dd_rhelp/download/index.en.html does work. NOTE: I have not tried this and have to run out for some errands now. Would love to hear from anyone who HAS tried it.
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