Hi Tom, I think your workflow should be, recover the entire disk to a good disk or a file, mount that recovered image with the password and/or decrypt it, then copy out the files you need. ddrescue can't 'magically' recover the data from the failed sectors so those files will be corrupt. However sometimes ddrescue will manage to read sectors on retries that cause OS access / copies to fail so you may be lucky...
David Sent from Outlook for Android<https://aka.ms/AAb9ysg> ________________________________ From: [email protected] <[email protected]> on behalf of [email protected] <[email protected]> Sent: Sunday, May 18, 2025 7:05:26 am To: [email protected] <[email protected]> Subject: Bug-ddrescue Digest, Vol 212, Issue 2 Send Bug-ddrescue mailing list submissions to [email protected] To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-ddrescue or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to [email protected] You can reach the person managing the list at [email protected] When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of Bug-ddrescue digest..." Today's Topics: 1. Guidance needed regarding recovering a folder using ddrescue (Tom) 2. Re: Guidance needed regarding recovering a folder using ddrescue (David Morrison) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Sat, 17 May 2025 20:07:18 -0700 From: Tom <[email protected]> To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> Subject: Guidance needed regarding recovering a folder using ddrescue Message-ID: <[email protected]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Hi! I'm running Manjaro Linux and I found out TODAY that the HDD in my HP Pavilion laptop is experiencing some S.M.A.R.T. failures, which I interpret as the drive starting to fail. :( So, I'm in the process of getting some data off it before I replace it with a SSD. Some files in some folders can't be copied, due to read errors. So, I was thinking I could use ddrescue to "recover" these folders so I can salvage the files. I've used ddrescue to recover entire HDDs, in the past, but I haven't tried it on individual folders. Is it possible to use ddrescue to recover individual folders or should I just try to recover the entire drive and then access the files in the recovered image? Also, the filesystem with the folders in question is on a partition that is encrypted (the entire drive is encrypted so I have to enter the password at boot time to boot the system). Will this impact my ability to recover the drive so I can access the files? Thanks in advance! Peace... Tom ------------------------------ Message: 2 Date: Sun, 18 May 2025 16:04:59 +1000 From: David Morrison <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Guidance needed regarding recovering a folder using ddrescue Message-ID: <[email protected]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed On 18/5/2025 13:07, Tom via Bug reports for ddrescue, data recovery tool. wrote: > Hi! I'm running Manjaro Linux and I found out TODAY that the HDD in my HP > Pavilion laptop is experiencing some S.M.A.R.T. failures, which I interpret > as the drive starting to fail. :( > > So, I'm in the process of getting some data off it before I replace it with a > SSD. Some files in some folders can't be copied, due to read errors. So, I > was thinking I could use ddrescue to "recover" these folders so I can salvage > the files. I've used ddrescue to recover entire HDDs, in the past, but I > haven't tried it on individual folders. > > Is it possible to use ddrescue to recover individual folders or should I just > try to recover the entire drive and then access the files in the recovered > image? I do not think so. ddrescue only knows about the disk blocks. It does not know anything about the filesystem on the disk to be able to identify files or folders. > Also, the filesystem with the folders in question is on a partition that is > encrypted (the entire drive is encrypted so I have to enter the password at > boot time to boot the system). Will this impact my ability to recover the > drive so I can access the files? This is one of the risks with encryption. Yes, it is secure, but only if everything continues to work properly. Recovering individual files from such a disk, I suspect, will be difficult. Cheers David ------------------------------ Subject: Digest Footer _______________________________________________ Bug-ddrescue mailing list [email protected] https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-ddrescue ------------------------------ End of Bug-ddrescue Digest, Vol 212, Issue 2 ********************************************
