wrote:
I found that Seagate makes software for disks that contains Acronis True
Image. That software is highly praised and costs a fair amount, but if
the drive is a Seagate, or Maxtor (owned by Seagate), the software is
free.
I downloaded it, ran it, and could not use my computer for 23+ hours
while it ran. It made an image of the whole defective partition to
another parttition. When it was done, it said there were errors and they
were listed in a .log file. The list of errors was very large, but the
majority of them were on folders which I have backed up. Yet, there were
still at least 80 or 100 missing from the files I need to recover.
However I was still far ahead from trying to copy files manually.
I nearly thought I was succeeding, and was nearly ready to toss that bad
drive in the trash and just try to locate and re-download the files that
were not copied (saved as ZERO BYTES). Then I discovered that none of
the .PDF files that were recovered could be used. All of them are
defectiive (except the ones I also saved by direct manual copy).
Just for the heck of it, I chose one defective PDF, which was recovered
at 256kb. I searched for it online, and re-downloaded it. That file is
supposed to be 742kb.
So, I've come to the conclusion it's hopeless trying to recover from
this drive. However, I am going to still see if a professional data
recovery service can do it.
And just to satisfy those of you who think linux can do this better, I
could not locate ddrescue or gddrescue online, but I did download a ISO
called systemrescuecd. I used unetbootn to make a bootable flash drive,
and said a lot of filthy words after trying several flash drives, none
of which would boot. And yes, my bios is set to boot from a flash drive,
since my Puppy linux stick does boot. This came as no surprise to me.
Thats the same bad luck I have always had with any and all forms of
linux, and I guess I needed to waste a few more hours of my time to
confirm why I hate linux.
At least you've kept your positive attitude and your sense of humor.
I still have no idea what kind of computer this is,
or even what era. I suspect it has IDE drives. As a guess.
I can check your distro here, for basic info. It's a small
image, Gentoo based.
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?dis...n=systemrescue
I downloaded the current one. I checked, and I have *seven*
other versions here. WTF. I don't remember using those, so
somebody must have asked me to try them out. Now I have eight
images.
Here's the latest one. For some reason, Xwindows didn't start,
so I had to issue a "startx" in the black terminal window, and the
GUI came up. The logged in user is "root", so you won't
need to add "sudo" to any commands needing elevation.
You can just use "ddrescue" without a sudo in front.
https://s1.postimg.org/69814ombvj/sysrescue_511.gif
The "ddrescue" command appears to be on the thing, as it
was there when I tried running it.
ddrescue -h
*******
So now we have to tackle, how did you get sysrescue
onto the Flash key. I checked the disc type, and it's an
old style ElTorito/Joliet overlay CD (like, forever). It's
not a newer hybrid. That means you can't just "dd" it onto
a USB stick.
Unetbootin lists SysRescueCD, so it's supposed to be
able to use it.
http://unetbootin.github.io/
The .dat on the SysRescueCD appears to be a ZIP style
archive of some sort. It's not a squashFS. I checked
my earliest version of SysRescue and it has the
same formulation. Whatever has happened, doesn't
seem to be some recent change.
And the SysRescueCD site itself has a bunch of recipes
for installing.
http://www.system-rescue-cd.org/Inst...n-a-USB-stick/
Using UnetBootin and using the ISO menu at the
bottom section of the screen, puts this on my *FAT32* USB key.
The ones with arrows below, those are contents that
came from the ISO. In addition, the [BOOT] on the ISO,
was replaced by the "isolinux" folder (as far as I know).
Volume in drive R is TRANSFER
Volume Serial Number is 0862-E66E
Directory of R:\
08/27/2013 2,422,752 ubnkern
02/01/2014 1,331,714 ubninit
10/10/2017 DIR boot ---
10/10/2017 DIR bootdisk ---
10/10/2017 DIR efi ---
10/10/2017 DIR isolinux ---
10/10/2017 DIR ntpasswd ---
10/10/2017 DIR usb_inst ---
10/10/2017 109 ubnpathl.txt
03/19/2017 2,363 readme.txt ---
09/29/2017 441,069,568 sysrcd.dat ---
09/29/2017 45 sysrcd.md5 ---
03/19/2017 15,946 usb_inst.sh ---
03/19/2017 912 usbstick.htm ---
09/29/2017 6 version ---
10/10/2017 10,723 ubnfilel.txt
10/10/2017 5,817 syslinux.cfg
10/10/2017 60,928 menu.c32
The USB key I made... doesn't boot. It is
not able to mount any partition. You can tell it's
struggling, and the text on the screen is coming
from the UnetBootin bootstrapper and not SysRescueCD.
OK, time to try another USB key tool. The portable version
for Windows.
https://rufus.akeo.ie/
https://rufus.akeo.ie/downloads/rufus-2.17p.exe (966,776 bytes)
Scan is clean.
https://www.virustotal.com/#/file/26...5ff6/detection
That's doing the same type of things as UnetBootin.
It's adding IsoLinux to aid boot off the USB.
I used the menu near the bottom, to select the ISO
option, and the blob to the right of it, to get
to a file manager window to select the ISO I wanted
to use.
The transfer to the USB stick was faster, but because
I was in a VM, it wasn't super-fast.
Now, over to the Test Machine to test it...
OK, using the BIOS boot menu, I select legacy rather
than UEFI boot, since I know it's not a hybrid source
and doesn't have the UEFI files.
When the SysRescue menu comes up, I cursor down
to line "(6)" for graphical start. Then hit return.
Once it coughs up text, it will stop for keyboard type,
I hit return again as US keyboard declaration is good
enough.
And the desktop comes up, as it should. It looks
the same as my "sysrescue_511.gif" image on postimage
above. The difference is, by selecting option 6, I
don't need any startx to be entered into a black screen
and it does that on its own.
So give Rufus a try. Initially I thought the results
would be the same, as it's an isolinux installer too,
but it seems to be more up-to-date than unetbootin.
(And I did use the latest unetbootin too, because
I don't normally stock these items. This is the first
time I've tried Rufus for example. And this wouldn't
be the first time that utnetbootin has let me down.)
HTH,
Paul