After trying various data recovery software programs, I'd like to try myRescue.

But I don't how to run it...

which distribution of linux do I need, how do I install myrescue, how do I run it.

Maybe there's some tutorial or something?

what are you trying to do? what needs recovered?

andy

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Databusters Data Recovery Glasgow
http://www.datarecovery.co.uk/latest-data-recovery-jobs/

I have been trying to recover a failing HD, It's barely recognized by windows.
Media Tools has been able to extract the first few gb's but then it comes across a huge amount of bad sectors which would take years to process.

I have read that myRescue will first try to read all the good sectors and then returns for the bad ones, which is exactly what I want.
I know that the deepspar program does this too, but that one's way to expensive.

So if there is anything else out there that has this ability, please tell me.

You've probably got a bad head in there.

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PC Image Data Recovery
http://www.pcimage.co.uk

New!! HDD-PCB.COM for all your PCB and donor HDD requirements!

Maybe was a failing head finally fallen =) . If u managed to take several GBs before geting the bads = at the begining of the extraction of data ur heads worked ok. The bads might be just what they are , a bunch of bads. Or it can be that 1 head died on u and everything under it from now on will be unreadable. I think latest R-Studio will allow u to scan all the way up to bad sectors , and then u can start jumping them manualy. There should be a time out option as well, telling the program how much time to spend on trying bad/slow sectors. Gl man.

I've made quite an interesting discovery.

Yesterday I used media tools to start cloning the bad HD (again), but it was very slow, and only continued without errors when using the "disable ecc on last retry" option.
So I stopped it again (since it was so damn slow)

Today, I tried it again, the system had been off for 24 hours, so it had cooled down.
Started up media tools and it started cloning like crazy, super fast!
Except that 10 minutes later it started to find errors again.
So I stopped it, and started it again, but now the part that was fine before, wasn't anymore, it was very slow again and would only extract when ecc was disabled.

I think that the drive was getting to hot, maybe I should put it in a ice bath when extracting the data...
Any suggestions?

Thanks.

Hi,

It is very probable you harddisk wont last very long.
Probably one of the heads is failing.
You can try to clone it like you are doing now, but it could also kill the drive.
If you want a professional advice, you can send me the drive and i'll make you a free offer (gratis offerte). I'm located in Belgium.
On refusal of the offer, we send back the drive free of charges.

Best regards,

Dobre

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Murphy was an optimist

Datarecovery in Belgium, Holland, France and Germany
Datarecoverytools http://www.drtools.eu

Thanks, but i want to do it myself, I'd like to know if it's a good idea to put the harddisk in the fridge or on dry-ice while extracting the data.

For sure you want to keep a failing drive cool whilst imaging or scanning.
In most cases a 4" fan from an old atx psu sitting on top of the drive blowing air at it should do the job.
If you are not going to take up the generous free offer then remember you could end up losing the important data!
You havn't said the size of the drive. Can I suggest using the free Copr.dma utility if the required data can be located in the first 128gb.

What's the advantage of using Copr.dma instead of media tools?

The size of the HD is 500gb

But I think the photo's I want to recover are in the first 100gb, but I'm not sure.

But to get back to my original question:

Cooling with a fan is good, is cooling in the fridge (-20 degrees) better?

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO, NEVER.

Moisture = bad

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Data Recovery Ireland

Listen to CK! cool only, not cold below dew point. Could also try cooling the controller pcb on the underside of the drive. It may be just a chip/component that's become heat sensitive. I've hunted down many of these in other equipment over the years

Ok, I have put my HD in a 4 bay enclosure with 4" fan, and it keeps the drive quite cool, I was to extract 18 GB this time, unfortunately there was no usefull data in that part of the drive.

I'd like to try COPYR.DMA, but does it support USB drives?
Because I clone from a SATA drive (with IDE converter) to an USB drive.

No.....sorry but this is a limitation of the free software. It's ide to ide but you can of course use sata to ide converter interfaces plugged directly into the ide interfaces on the motherboard.

Already got one for the source sata drive, I think I still got some old IDE drive laying around.

I'm getting some good results with media tools when I use different starting points, but it is still very slow when encounters errors.
So I still want to try MyRescue.

Does anybody have experience with this tool, or maybe some manual/tutorial.

thanks.

Just to close this thread,

I managed to copy all the photo's from the faulty drive, the problem was that media tools couldn't handle it.

I used Copyr.dma for the first part and ddrescue for the rest of the drive, it got the job done in 2 days.
After that I used getdataback for retrieving the files.
For ddrescue, I recommend the "ultimate Debian live cd" from multidistro.com, debian was the only distribution that could access my drive, and the ultimate cd has ddrescue preinstalled.

Thanks for the help.

Good job.

Dobre

_________________
Murphy was an optimist

Datarecovery in Belgium, Holland, France and Germany
Datarecoverytools http://www.drtools.eu