On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 4:10 PM, Matt Oates (Home) <[email protected]> wrote: > On 12 May 2011 14:57, guerrier <[email protected]> wrote: >> On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 9:48 AM, Matt Oates (Home) <[email protected]> >> wrote: >>> Is parallel a great idea here? >> >> That's my real question. I have a failing hdd, from which i would >> like to move as much data as possible as fast possible. > > If it was me I'd chuck in a blank USB disk and use the 'dd' command to > just verbatim copy the partition/disk over, this is about as quick as > you are going to get.
Use: dd conv=noerror if=/dev/disk1 of=/dev/disk2 or look at dd_rescue and ddrescue. These programs are made for your task. And after that: fsck of the copy. GNU Parallel would only make matters worse in this case as it will make the disk arms thrash (which is likely to kill a sick disk). /Ole
