0
My laptop HDD is slowly failing, and I am trying to back up a system image before replacing it. The problem is every time I attempt it, there is an I/O error that stops the whole thing. Basically my hard drive will work in short bursts, have an I/O error, then work again. This makes creating an image nearly impossible.
Any thoughts or recommendations on what I can do to back it up? I have programs on it that I can't replace.
JasonTheRand
Posted 2015-07-11T20:26:35.507
Reputation: 3
0
You want to get a Linux bootable / Rescue disk and use ddrescue - This will attempt to to a bit copy with the sole goal of trying to pull as much information off the disk as it can.
I'd suggest running it at least twice - 1 - Run it "forward" to pull data quickly off the front of the drive. 2. - Run it "reverse" to pull data quickly off the end of the drive - Once its finished pulling the easy data it will then start on the bad data and keep on trying for as long as you have time.
You might want to use the "ddrescue gui" if you can find a distro with it - ddrescue is great, but it is a command line program. (I've never used the GUI)
Some rescue disks which include ddrescue (but may not include the new gui version) include: http://ubuntu-rescue-remix.org/Software http://www.sysresccd.org/Detailed-packages-list
davidgo
Posted 2015-07-11T20:26:35.507
Reputation: 49 152
1something worth noting - there's ddrescue, and gnuddrescue. The latter has worked well for me, and basically copies what it can in the first pass, and try to recover more on future passes. kpartx is nice for mounting multi-disk images, and you can run whatever file copies or consistancy checks in linux – Journeyman Geek – 2015-07-13T00:39:07.723
Unfortunately, your question as written is primarily opinion-based and will likely be closed because overly subjective questions are not a good fit for our Q&A model. The help center has more guidance on how to ask a good question and what kinds of questions to avoid asking.
– bwDraco – 2015-07-11T22:19:53.870