I know nobody's gonna read this, so I won't elaborate it too much. And it's a pity because this is the only method I found to work.
PROBLEM: Trying to rescue lots of valuable photos from a HDD with lots of bad sectors. When the reading software stumbles on a bad sector, it hangs (becomes unresponsive) and the only thing you can do is to unplug the USB.
THINGS TRIED: (didn't work)
All software promise that they "skip bad sectors without stop". False.
- DataRescue DD. Simplistic and obsolete.
- EaseUS Data Recovery. Recovers until it finds a bad sector.
- HDD Raw Copy Tool.
- Parted Magic. It's the same as using plain Linux distro + ddrescue.
- Clonezilla. Tried several setups: VM, Live CD; USB and SATA connections.
- AOMEI Backupper option "Disk Clone". Clones nothing.
- WinHex option Clone Disk.
- EaseUS Partition Master.
Besides, these tools don't allow to select a block o resume.
Not tried: DeepSpar Disk Imager (hardware, costs $3.000+).
APPROACHING THE SOLUTION
ddrescue is a complex program where everything is configurable. It runs on Linux and on Windows (with Cygwin). Tutorial. I wasn't able to run DDRescue-GUI (some XOpenDisplay error), besides the GUI simpler than the command-line.
Things tried with ddrescue. Some people suggested some workarounds:
- Run ddrescue in a loop and set timeout options that stop execution.
- Change OS HDD timeout to speed up. /sys/block/sdb/device/timeout
- Reset the USB HDD from the inside. /sys/bus/usb/drivers/usb unbind-bind; usb_modeswitch -v 0x.... -p 0x.... --reset-usb. Using Window's Device Manager is the same.
- End the ddrescue process (killall, taskkill). Example script. Doesn't work, as the process is unresponsive.
SOLUTION
A host with a Virtual Machine (VirtualBox). The host runs a server
that listens to attach/detach commands and sends them to the VM.
A Windows guest VM that runs a manager script that controls the workflow: start/stop ddrescue, send attach/detach commands to host, and move forward the position in the mapfile.
A Linux (Debian) VM didn't work. After detaching, VirtualBox says: "Failed to attach the USB device to the VM"
####Script1 server.py runs in host####
import subprocess
from bottle import route, run
exe = "C:/Program Files/Oracle/VirtualBox/VBoxManage.exe"
vm = "Win7"
id = "54a7249b-930a-4d49-a679-9a7b8810adcc" # VBoxManage list usbhost
def execute(cmd):
p = subprocess.Popen(cmd, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.STDOUT, shell=True)
(output, err) = p.communicate()
p_status = p.wait()
res = output.decode("utf-8")
if "error" in res:
return "1"
else:
return "0"
return
@route('/attach')
def cmd1():
res = execute('"' + exe + '" controlvm ' + vm + " usbattach " + id)
return res
@route('/detach')
def cmd2():
res = execute('"' + exe + '" controlvm ' + vm + " usbdetach " + id)
return res
run(host='0.0.0.0', port=80)
.
####Script2 manager.py runs in guest####
import requests
import subprocess
import time
import re
import os
def get_id(disk):
p = subprocess.Popen("wmic diskdrive get Index, Model", stdout=subprocess.PIPE, shell=True)
(output, err) = p.communicate()
p_status = p.wait()
res = output.decode("utf-8")
lines = res.splitlines()
id = ""
for line in lines:
if line.find(disk) > 1:
id = line[0]
return id
def check_disk(disk):
p = subprocess.Popen("wmic diskdrive get Model", stdout=subprocess.PIPE, shell=True)
(output, err) = p.communicate()
p_status = p.wait()
res = output.decode("utf-8")
if disk in res:
return 1
else:
return 0
def mod_disk(disk, cmd):
v=1 if cmd=='attach' else 0
for i in range(3):
response = requests.get('http://192.168.1.20/'+cmd)
res = response.content.decode("utf-8")
if "0" in res:
while True:
if(check_disk(disk)==v):
break
time.sleep(1)
print("[" + disk + " " + cmd + " wait]")
print("[" + disk + " " + cmd + " ok]")
break
time.sleep(3)
def dec2hex(n):
return "%X" % n
def hex2dec(s):
return int(s, 16)
def update_mapfile():
skip = 5000000 #5Mb
with open(mapfile, 'r') as file:
data = file.readlines()
line7 = data[6]
p = re.compile('^0x(.*?) ')
hval = p.findall(line7)[0]
dval = hex2dec(hval)
dval2 = dval + skip
hval2 = dec2hex(dval2)
line7b = re.sub(hval, hval2, line7)
data[6] = line7b
with open(mapfile, 'w') as file:
file.writelines(data)
############################
disk = "WD 3200AAJ"
mapfile = "E:/mapfile.log"
inpt = "/dev/sdb" if get_id(disk) == "1" else "/dev/sdc"
cmdl = 'c:/cygwin/bin/ddrescue.exe -v -d -n -O ' + inpt + ' E:/image.img E:/mapfile.log'
#Start ddrescue
proc = subprocess.Popen(cmdl, shell=True, stdin=None, stdout=None, stderr=None, close_fds=True)
print("Start ddrescue")
time.sleep(60)
while True:
ft = os.path.getmtime(mapfile)
n = time.time()
if n-ft > 60:
#send sigterm
p = subprocess.Popen('taskkill /f /fi "imagename eq ddrescue.exe"', stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.STDOUT, shell=True)
(output, err) = p.communicate()
p_status = p.wait()
print("send sigterm")
#detach HDD
mod_disk(disk, 'detach')
time.sleep(2)
print("detach HDD")
#update modfile
update_mapfile()
print("update modfile")
#attach HDD
mod_disk(disk, 'attach')
time.sleep(2)
print("attach HDD")
#restart ddrescue
inpt = "/dev/sdb" if get_id(disk) == "1" else "/dev/sdc"
cmdl = 'c:/cygwin/bin/ddrescue.exe -v -d -n -O ' + inpt + ' E:/image.img E:/mapfile.log'
proc = subprocess.Popen(cmdl, shell=True, stdin=None, stdout=None, stderr=None, close_fds=True)
print("restart ddrescue")
time.sleep(60)
Obviously you will need to adapt the configuration to your system.