Simple Guide to GNU ddrescue

You can find ddrescue here.

Show the disks via Linux terminal

> lshw -short | grep disk

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.