[TriLUG] getting dd if=[flaky device] to ignore read errors

[Brian Henning]

Hi Gang,
   I have a failing hard drive.  Yeah yeah, I should have backed it up. 
  That's another story.  Anyway, I have a replacement on the way (should 
have arrived today, in fact).  I have some recovery software (OnTrack 
EasyRecovery 6.0 Professional), but it wants to segfault during the 
drive scanning process.  I believe the segfaulting is due to the bad 
drive doing something wacky.  So here's what I want to do [it's one big 
NTFS volume]:

- Make a bit-for-bit copy of the old drive (or at least, the sectors its 
failing controller will still let me access...so far, a majority; there 
are just unrecoverable errors that happen to fall in the MFT area) onto 
the new one
- Let EasyRecovery scan the new one, hoping that the 100% working drive 
will let ER recover what it can of the broken data.

So that means I need a utility that will do a low-level copy from one 
device to another.  dd comes to mind immediately.  But in looking 
through the info, I'm not seeing any documentation on how to get it to 
ignore read errors.  I don't care what garbage data goes into the output 
byte when the input byte is unreadable; I just need the garbage to be 
there so the data stays the right size.

Is dd the tool to use?  Do I need to write my own low-level program to 
do it for me?  I'm really not concerned about recovering from the worst 
of the damage; I just want to recover whatever I can.  Without spending 
a buttload of money, of course.

Thanks for all input!

~Brian

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Brian A. Henning
strutmasters.com
336.597.2397x238
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