Error Trying To Recover From HDD Clone

[Ryan]

Using Data Rescue PC5

111.8 GB laptop HDD with Windows XP failed and went RAW. Happened about 2 years ago and I finally got around to trying to salvage whatever I can. Mostly what I need off of there is some personal emails, but even if I can manage to get the files, they are in a funky format and I'm not sure if I'll ever be able to read them. But I'd like to try to get that and whatever else I can.

Took 17.5 hours to clone the laptop HDD to a 2.0 TB desktop HDD. (probably that slow because both drives were mounted externally through some old external interfaces)

The clone seemed to finish successfully and only about 3.4 MB of the 111.8 GB on the laptop HDD was reported as "bad" by DRPC5 during the clone process.

When trying to do a Deep Scan on the desktop HDD it ended in a few seconds with "error number -4"

That's as far as I got.

I suppose since it put 17.5 more hours on the original drive, I probably would have been better off just doing the deep scan on that drive, but that's hindsight. I wanted the clone in case that drive goes kaput.

I'd prefer to use the clone to recover from at this point, but it doesn't seem to work.

Any advice appreciated!

 

[Jared]

Data Rescue is pretty good for Mac recoveries, but I don't think it's any good for Windows formatted drives.

Try scanning the clone with R-Studio demo and see what that finds. That'll give a much better idea what's happening.

Is the program finding any data at all? Perhaps the cloning process just failed entirely.

 

[Ryan]

Yes I think the clone probably failed. I don't know what error number -4 means in DRPC5, but that's the error I get when trying to access the clone with the program. Nothing is read at all.

I tried a quick recovery directly from the drive just for a few moments to see if there would be any errors. The process did not fail after letting it run for a few minutes. My gut feeling is that it will be able to recover at least something directly from the drive. But I am really disappointed that I spent over 17 hours cloning the drive... put 17 hours of wear and tear on it, the whole time having it look like the cloning process was going perfectly and then having a clone (maybe) that doesn't work. Don't get why the clone failed.

DRPC5 seems to get outstanding reviews on PC as well as MAC. So I still think it's a good choice.

Hmmmm... wouldn't the clone be some proprietary format? I wouldn't expect them to make their clones in some standard format another program could read. Don't expect R-Studio can do it, but maybe I will give it a try. Or maybe I will just try to recover directly from the drive. I don't think it's failing physically, but I wanted to do a clone anyway just to be extra careful in case it does. But I can see now the clone will be a gigantic pain all by itself.

I agree with your suggestion that perhaps the clone just doesn't work. BUMMER.

 

[Jared]

[post]10968[/post] Don't expect R-Studio can do it, but maybe I will give it a try

R-Studio can image drives (if they are relatively healthy). You just have to enable "write" in the settings, then right click the drive and select "copy object to". That'll bring up the copy object menu.

However, a better method of cloning is to use ddrescue in Linux. I wrote up a guide for that here: how-to-clone-a-hard-drive-with-bad-sectors-using-ddrescue-t133.html

 

[Ryan]

Thank you!

Can you briefly list the reasons why ddrescue is better for cloning and or recovering data than R-Studio, Data Rescue PC or any of the other commercially available software (other than the fact that it is free)?

I have never heard a clear or good explanation of this, and I would really like to understand it.

Thanks again for your help Jared!

 

[Ryan]

okay... follow up. Jared I read your excellent post about cloning with ddrescue and it answered the question I posed about that in the "Why you can't clone with Windows" paragraph. Your post is several years old, don't know if that factor has changed since then.

So you are saying that the advantage to cloning with dderescue vs. any Windows based software is that in some cases at least, where the source drive has bad sectors, no current Windows method is available to make a true and effective clone. Is that essentially it?

You would think the commercial Windows developers might mention something about that if they offer a cloning feature. If this is the case, they should either be developing in in Linux (or something else that works) or not selling it at all. Seems not right that they are selling a flawed cloning system.

I do have a couple of questions about this as well.

1. Once you make the clone with dderescue, how can that clone be used to recover data? Can you briefly describe the process?

2. What software do you recommend to recover that data from the dderescue clone and why do you recommend it over the others?

(Of course we are assuming only software based recovery here, which is the only kind I will realistically be doing.)

 

[Jared]

[post]10986[/post] You would think the commercial Windows developers might mention something about that if they offer a cloning feature. If this is the case, they should either be developing in in Linux (or something else that works) or not selling it at all. Seems not right that they are selling a flawed cloning system.

Microsoft doesn't give one hoot about peoples data getting lost. If they did, they'd completely get rid of chkdisk since that's probably the most data destructive program around. They assume everyone has a backup and if you don't it's your fault. Windows, like most OSs, assumes drives are healthy and works with them accordingly. This makes things faster when it really is healthy, but not well suited when there's a problem. Linux just allows programs more direct control of the whole imaging process.

As to your other questions:
1. You then just treat it like it's the original drive and scan with data recovery software.
2. For NTFS, I'll always recommend R-Studio as a first go to. Another good option is Recovery Explorer.

 

[Ryan]

Thanks Jarad, great info.

Does a drive need to be formatted before you use it to make the clone? I'm guessing not, but just want to understand it better.

 

[Jared]

No, there's no need to format it. That'll all be overwritten with the data from the old drive anyway.

 

[datahaze]

You can use ddrescue to clone to a partition or file depending on what you want to do. Let's say your source drive is /dev/sda and the drive you're cloning to is /dev/sdb. You can just do:

ddrescue /dev/sda /dev/sdb ddrescue.log

If you want to same the clone as an image, which is my suggestion, let's assume again that /dev/sda is the source and you have a filesystem on /dev/sdb1 which is mounted at /media/ubuntu/EXTERNALDRIVE. Then you would do this:

ddrescue /dev/sda /media/ubuntu/EXTERNALDRIVE/image.ddrescue /media/ubunt/EXTERNALDRIVE/image.ddrescue.log