[NBLUG/talk] Recovering data from a failing hard disk

[Mitch Patenaude]

I don't think dd is as useful a tool as other's apparently do.  It does 
one thing
well: block i/o, usually to/from raw devices.  Using it to move regular 
files
around is, if anything, worse than just using cp.  dd is ignorant of 
things like
sparse files, symlinks, permissions, yada yada.

Here's what I'd recommend:

cd /old/disk; find . -print0 | cpio -pdmv0 /new/disk/

Note: it's vital that find print the names relative to the mount point 
of the old drive.

This will preserve symlinks, permissions, ownership, etc.

   -- Mitch


On Aug 23, 2004, at 5:51 PM, Lincoln Peters wrote:

> I need to transfer a huge volume of data from a failing 160GB hard disk
> to a new one of the same size.  I'm thinking that the following would 
> do
> the trick:
>
> find -print0 | xargs -0 --replace=FILE dd conv=noerror if=FILE 
> of=/new/disk/FILE
>
> Is there a better way?
>
> ---
> Lincoln Peters
> <sampln at sbcglobal.net>
>
> BOFH excuse #384:
>
> it's an ID-10-T error
>
>
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