Recover a dead hard drive with ddrescue

I use Ubuntu, so this is geared towards using that OS, but gddrescue (ddrescue) should be available on most Linux distributions.

I got most of this info from: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DataRecovery

Install with:

sudo apt-get install gddrescue

Find the disk to rescue with:

sudo fdisk -l

Then run the command using a command like this:

sudo ddrescue -r 5 /dev/sdf /tank/Backup/image /tank/Backup/logfile

In this case 5 is the number of retries attempted to read the data before giving up, /dev/sdf is the path to the device that you found via fdisk -l /tank/Backup/image is the image file that will be written. /tank/Backup/logfile is a logfile that is kept of the recovery.

If the backup is interrupted or you want to run it for another pass with hopes of recovering more information use a command like this:

sudo ddrescue -r 5 -C /dev/sdf /tank/Backup/image /tank/Backup/logfile

Note the -C which tells ddrescue to pickup where it left off, or try to fill in the blocks that are missing

Create an emergency recovery disk

Linux.com has an article up detailing how you can create your own recovery disk from an ubuntu 8.04 cd.

http://www.linux.com/feature/137524

This is a great tool for anyone who does support and has gotten those calls late at night calls.  "I lost it! My computers brain is dead." followed by eyerolls.