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To avoid putting it off, I'll write down all the possible options now.
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Option one is suitable for extracting a small amount of data from a hard drive, say up to a hundred or so megabytes. Often, even less. Typically, documents in PDF, Word, Excel, crypto certificates for signing bank documents, and so on. As you've noticed, the program has several buttons labeled "virtual mode". OpenSuperClone also comes with DMDE pre-installed. These buttons create a virtual hard drive in the system, which you can open in DMDE. Depending on the selected mode, you can open the desired partition and search for the files you need. At the same time, the data requested by DMDE is copied to the image. These virtual modes are also useful when you don't want to push your luck and copy the entire drive, but simply try to quickly copy what you need. If you need to copy gigabytes of files or extract folders with tons of files inside, you can do this using virtual mode. There's an option that returns zero bytes instead of requesting data from the problematic hard drive. This is especially helpful in this case, as well as when the hard drive is nearing the end of its life and is reading at a rate of 2 kilobytes per hour.
This option has one drawback: it has no timeouts or skipping of unreadable data (in some modes). The program will try to read data until the hard drive returns an error. If the hard drive head is damaged, or the surface underneath is damaged, this will quickly destroy it and the hard drive will start clicking, ending the data recovery project.
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Option two, more easily described as "no step back". Let's say the drive simply has a dirty head, while the platters themselves are fine. This symptom looks like this: "The drive can easily read data written long ago, but either writes it extremely slowly, or writes it just as quickly, but can't read data it wrote a second ago." Then it stops reading even data that hasn't been rewritten before.
Or the laptop was handled a little rough and hit a few times, which caused a few scratches on the disk platters, but nothing more.
The hard drive marks sectors it can't read as pending reallocation. It immediately relocates sectors it can't write data to. If you look at the data displayed in the SMART window, you'll see, in addition to the expected warnings, there's one parameter you'd really want to see at or near zero on WD HDDs: the write error rate.
This indicates that one or more heads are already damaged and unable to write data correctly.
But since the heads are still somewhat capable of reading, you can take a drastic approach and clear the list of sectors waiting to be moved, and forcing the hard drive to not add anything to this list if it encounters an unreadable sector. OpenSuperClone also has this functionality.
There's only one drawback: it's extremely risky. The advantage of OpenSuperClone is that its script automatically skips any unreadable sectors as quickly as possible during the first stage of copying, so as not to destroy dying heads. You can manually set the step size, in case a head is struggling to read, to quickly copy what's still copyable. But either way, it's incredibly risky.
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Option three - with additional actions and maximum care for the data.
This method is the exact opposite of the previous one in terms of solving the problem with slow response. First, you'll need to copy and save the first sector of the hard drive (sector 0 for the computer), or the first four sectors (which are sectors 0 through 3 for the computer) if the drive uses the GPT partitioning type. Then, erase these sectors. This is necessary so that when connecting the hard drive to a Windows computer, the system doesn't try to search for and mount partitions, causing freezes. We'll need Windows because the utility that allows you to work with the hard drive firmware is only available for Windows. Also, USB-SATA cables and external hard drive bays are sometimes suitable for such tasks, but sometimes they don't work. So, the ability to fit two hard drives into your laptop could prove incredibly useful after all this time. You'll need to find any hard drive and install 32-bit Windows 7 on it.
Next, you'll need to make a backup copy of the firmware using this specific utility and upload it to the forum. The free demo version of this program will do this, and you won't be able to damage the hard drive using it.
Why do this? The firmware contains lists of problematic and relocated sectors. There's also another file that converts the logical sectors the computer accesses into physical sectors accessed by the hard drive itself. Inside your hard drive are two disks and four heads. The hard drive constantly switches between them when it's doing something with the data. It reads, say, 100 megabytes, then switches to the next head, and so on, in a circle. But to the operating system, it looks like it's reading one continuous file. If the drive does have head problems (all failures will be on only one head), you'll receive a specially prepared project file and a domain file.
As you may have noticed, OpenSuperClone creates two files: one with the project file, named as you named it, and the other with the .domain extension.
The project file stores the current progress, and the domain file is a really cool feature of OpenSuperClone. It lists the sectors that need to be copied. If you run the copy as is, all the disk sectors will be added, but using this specially prepared file, you can copy the disk without attempting to touch the data that the damaged head needs to read. Then you can freely take greater risks and read the remaining necessary data.
OpenSuperClone uses its script to guess how much data is allocated to each head, and by manually creating a domain file, we can set precise boundaries for what should be read and what should not be read. This significantly speeds up the copying process and greatly reduces the risk of losing data mid-process.
This option also has a drawback: the actions described above are the highest skill in using opensuperclone; 99% of its users have never done anything like this. Copying a disk with precise bypass of the problematic head is something a data recovery lab does, not home users. If the hard drive does suffer from head issues, and you manage to complete this process, you can add professional data recovery experience to your portfolio. I'm not kidding.
One more thing: I haven't tried this with WD hard drives; we'll likely need help from other forum members with access to professional equipment. The main issue is creating a domain file from the hard drive's system files.
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Option 4: A data recovery lab. If your data is truly valuable and you need it quickly, but you don't want to take any risks. Choosing the right lab is a separate topic, but you'll get the best results, and your risks will be handled by professionals who know exactly what to do with hard drives.
The downside is obvious - it costs money, and it's expensive.
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