This will show how to recover failed hard disk using Linux and open source tools
Failed hard disk in this case means:
- S.M.A.R.T. not healthy.
- Hard disk have some bad sector
- Some data cannot read and make system slow
- The disk are still available in /dev/
The tools
- Ubuntu Linux or other GNU Linux
- GNU ddrescue
Process:
- install the tools
- # apt-get install gddrescue smartmontools
- Plug your failed hdd to linux system, use dmsg | tail to determine what device name were shown in this case is sdb ( /dev/sdb )
- If you want to recovery whole drive to another new healthy disk (disk to disk),
- # ddrescue -f -n /dev/sdb /dev/sdX logfile.log # where X is your new healthy disk
- The option -f and -n said force dump "only" the good parts from your failed hdd to new one, this will skip the error parts and make this activity faster than the dd command.
- ddrescue use logfile.log file next time for recover the error parts.
- Now the error parts.
- # ddrescue -d -f -r3 /dev/sdb /dev/sdX logfile.log # where X is your new healthy disk
- The option -r3 said try 3 times to read error parts, you can change the desire value depends on your hdd health.
- You may or may not check your new disk (fsck) when finish.
Summary and suggestion:
- Always monitor your hard disk health, use smartmontools and setup the daemon will help.
