Simple Guide to GNU ddrescue

Modified on Thu, Apr 21, 2022 at 10:45 AM

You can find ddrescue here.


Show the disks via Linux terminal

> lshw -short | grep disk


lshw_short.png
lshw_short.png (9.04 KiB) Viewed 22458 times

Clone the drive

General example

> ddrescue {source} {destination} {logfile}


Image to file on mounted drive (ie, /mnt/destination) that has enough free space to hold the full image of the source drive

> ddrescue /dev/sda /mnt/destination/driveimage.bin logfile.log


Image disk-to-disk

> ddrescue -f /dev/sda /dev/sdf logfile.log

The -f switch is to force the overwriting of the destination drive. Without this switch, ddrescue will not permit a drive-to-drive clone to start.


Note: the logfile will be stored in the location from which the command was run. You can always specify the direct path to store the log file, if needed.


A few useful switches, should you need them:


Generate a log file (considers all non-zeroed sectors as being unread):

Switch: -g

> ddrescue -g {source} {destination} newlogfile.log

No data is read from the source or written to the destination during this process.


Image in reverse:

Switch: -R

> ddrescue -R {source} {destination} logfile.log


Retries:

Switch: -r {# of retries}

> ddrescue -r 3 {source} {destination} logfile.log


To view all possible switches:

> ddrescue --help


Once your clone/image has completed and you want to attempt a file system recovery, I suggest trying R-Studio. It is quite simple to use and supports most common file systems and RAID recoveries.

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