Anyone know of a software that can take two partial images and mix them together into a full one? Basically I have a drive that I get slightly different info off of every time I run it through dd_rescue. It fills in the spots it can't read with zeroes. If some software was intelligent to look at multiple images and make a new one using all of the non-zero data from the input files that would be great.

I've poked around in winhex etc and can't seem to find a function like this. Anyone know of anything?

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You don't have to backup all of your files, just the ones you want to keep.

I usually build a complete image of zeros then paste the partial
images into the proper location.

The issue in this case being that the partials that I have have empty spots distributed all over them, rather than just chunks. Basically I have:

GOODGOODGOODGOODGOODGOODGOODGOODGOODGOODGOODxxxxGOODGOODGOODGOODGOOD
GOODGOODxxxxGOODGOODGOODGOODGOODGOODGOODGOODGOODGOODGOODGOODGOODGOOD
GOODGOODGOODGOODGOODGOODxxxxGOODGOODGOODGOODGOODGOODGOODGOODxxxxGOOD

and

GOODxxxxGOODGOODGOODxxxxGOODGOODGOODGOODGOODGOODGOODGOODGOODGOODGOOD
GOODGOODGOODGOODGOODGOODGOODxxxxGOODxxxxGOODGOODGOODGOODxxxxGOODGOOD
GOODGOODGOODGOODGOODGOODGOODGOODGOODGOODGOODxxxxGOODGOODGOODGOODGOOD

and want to reassemble them into one solid good image.

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You don't have to backup all of your files, just the ones you want to keep.

one thing you might try is reverse imaging the drive.( this will
eliminate cached reads and read-ahead)

I use media-tools for this, and I used Runtime's Disk explorer
for individual sectors.
This is sometimes a time consuming process.
if you find something automatic please let us know

my usual weapon of choice is dd_rescue/dd_rhelp/ddrescue. usually this is sufficient but I was working with a particularly bad drive this week that was successful imaging in different spots depending on what software I was using.

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You don't have to backup all of your files, just the ones you want to keep.

I would use winhex.

dd_rescue is all what you need.
In the default, it writes only if can read.
The -A option forces to write if the source is unreadable!

Anyway, if you have a little knowledge for programming, with linux and dd_rescue it is easy to write the solution!

Additionally, try to heat up, or cool down a little the drive....

Regards,
Janos