On Sat, 7 Oct 2017 22:02:40 +0100, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
wrote:

Anonymous: how are you remembering which files have been saved
successfully (either now, or because they were backed up previously)?
I'd be tempted to delete them (and any folders that are then empty) from

I wrote down all root folders, compared them to my backup, and marked on
the paper which I dont have to mess with, because they are backed up.

There are two main folders that need to be saved. One just has a series
of recent folders to save. I wrote down which ones I have to save, then
tried to copy them. If it copied good, I marked "OK", if only partial
copy, I wrote "Part". A few copied nothing, on those I wrote "Bad".

the flaky drive, so that only the ones still to be rescued are still
visible; however, that would involve writing to the flaky drive
(deleting is just modifying folder data), which is generally a Bad Idea.
[It's what I did when I had a flaky drive, though - well, I did move
rather than copy, which of course does a copy then a delete if the copy
was successful.]

By accident I wrote to that bad partition twice now. It never fails,
when I copy stuff, I accidentally hit the wrong key and it makes a file
in the same folder called "copy of filaname.xxx". I just deleted them
with no effect. I thought about deleting all the stuff that is saved,
but I dont think that is a good idea. I did delete everything from the
other two good partitions on the drive though. Then I formatted them
too. I was thinking of seeing if I could copy the bad partition to a
good one, but I think it's better to copy to another HDD entirely.


For the hard-to-read files, I'd be tempted to seek - or write -
something which opens them, then copies them byte by byte (to a file on
a good drive) until a read error occurs; that way you'd have at least
part of the file, which may or may not be usable. (Ideally, something
which then carries on after the bad patch, maybe writing blanks to the
copy for the unreadable bytes - so that the copy at least is the same
size and has the tail, which for some filetypes - I think .zip is one -
is where important information about the contents is.)

Most of the large files that I cant save, are .PDF manuals and
electronic schematics. Part of a PDF is worthless. On the other hand,
part of a MP4 will play and part of a JPG can usually be viewed.


Paul (or anyone else) - do you know of any such utility? [Preferably not
involving command lines, either in Windows or Linux (-:!] I did (a long
time ago - I think in BBC BASIC!) write one that did the first part
(copy byte by byte until error), but not beyond. [IIRR, BBC BASIC closed
the input file when there was an error reading.]
--

Yea, I wish there was something easier to use. I read a bunch of
websites and it appears there are several different versions of ddrescue
and gddrescue. I cant even find out where to download it, and know it's
the right one. Of course when it comes to linux, it seems there are
always too many versions and everyone claims theirs is the best. (One
reason I dont like linux).

It shows that gddrescue is a graphical menu of ddrescue, but on other
sites it claims the "G" only means "Gnu". A URL of the place to download
the GOOD ONE" would be appreciated, and hopefully the one with the GUI
front end.

J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

In all honesty, I dont really think this drive is dying. Yes, it has a
bad sector and unfortunately it appears that bad sector is in the FAT
tables. I will replace the drive though, but I dont think it's dying by
the minute. I really think Scandisk caused this mess. A power outage
caused the computer to shut off while I was using it, and many of my
partitions required running scandisk because they were showing the wrong
size. But that happens faily often and has never been a problem. I
should mention that I defrag at least twice a week, and the data should
not be fragmented. If somehow I can get the FAT tables repaired, I may
have a usable partition again.

I'm still tempted to let Norton Disk Doctor do what it's sugggesting,
which is to repair the boot record and copy the backup version of the
FAT, but before I do that, I want to save as much data as I can, and
hopfully clone the partition too. It's now obvious that all my data is
there, but the FAT record is not showing or accessing it properly, thus
the whole problem is in the FAT, not the data itself.

I may take the drive to a local computer repair shop and see if they
have some software to fix it, or should I get brave and let Norton disk
doctor do it's thing??? This sure is a gamble!!!!