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Linux and saving a hard drive

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Deety

Deety

Head Coach
So... my backup system hasn't actually backed up one of my drives for a few months (despite all that "checking for changes" nonsense), and now the drive has failed, which is just a bit of a horrendous disaster. It threw it into chkdsk a couple of times and and stalled after completing Journal Verification. Once, I cancelled chkdsk (I know, not bright) and it showed the drive, but then I had to shutdown to add a drive big enough to handle the data, and it didn't go to chkdsk or show again. I've tried to grab an image and tried using it in a dock (spins up but won't stay connected long enough to run anything), and am freaked out at the thought of messing further with a dying disk.

The goal is now to get as much as I can possibly salvage from my old drive H: (2TB WD Green) to my new drive I: (4TB WD Black). A full recovery would be ideal, but even if I can get in to grab recent files and some files that were too big for my online backup, that would suffice.

It seems as though the next step is to try accessing it with Linux (which I have not used before), but I've been looking at this guide (Method 3) and am extremely confused. Can anyone help me out, or suggest a better plan?

If I'm booting to a Linux flash drive, which distro do I use? Is the SystemRescue Live CD just a version of bootable Linux with that program built in? If not, how do I install programs when I'm booting off a flash drive?

If I boot to Linux and then image the drive (since I can't image it in Windows), should I be using DD (which I would also have to learn) to make the image? Would I have to NOT use the SystemRescue Live CD because I don't want to scan it at this point?

I can't figure out steps 7, 8, and 9 at all. Why am I mounting drives in all three steps, rather than just telling it to copy H: to my new drive I:?

Is there an easier way to summarize what should be done than in that guide?

Thanks so, so much to anyone who can help.
 
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I used to use a KNOPPIX live CD to help people recover data from bad drives.

The most forward way to explain it is this:

Get a live image that will run without the hard drive supporting it (Disk, thumb drive, etc) - this will boot up and allow you to to access the data on the drive that is recoverable (bad sectors can be an issue). There should then be a functionality to move the data to another drive or disk - if your storage device is external to the PC you may need to figure out how to mount it within LINUX. If your alternate storage is a hard drive already within the PC, it should be recognized immediately by the live image.

I wouldn't recommend actually imaging it with LINUX unless you know you have partition space available. WINDOWS being WINDOWS usually takes up most of the drive space unless it was specifically partitioned not to do so (like a dual-boot system).
 
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Deety said:
So just get and boot to that live image on a flash drive, and then learn just enough linux to copy from H: to I:? That is sounding much more reasonable.
Click to expand...

It may show up as H and I but it depends on how sophisticated the live disk/drive is....

Anything else I should be trying other than the Linux thing?
Click to expand...

honestly I can't think of anything other than taking the failing disk drive out and finding another emulator much like the LIVE disk would be doing.
 
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I bought a device for copying/cloning hard drives years ago. I've successfully done it may times on my computers and others. It's a life saver! They are typically about $50.
 
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where that person tells you to output the stuff to /home/recovery, you can just point it to /{whereever your new drive is mounted}/. Linux uses mount points, not drive letters, so, if you are feeling more advanced, you could just mount your new drive at /home/recovery :).
 
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Any live Linux CD or DVD will do. Get one like knoppix or Ubuntu. They should mount your data drive and you can copy all the data to another hard drive.

However, be very careful with DD, as you can hose data if not done correctly.
 
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