Re: How to force copy retries until finally copied all due to a dying old HDD in Linux?

From	ebenZEROONE@verizon.net (Hactar)
Newsgroups	comp.os.linux.misc, comp.os.linux.help, comp.os.linux.setup, comp.os.linux.hardware
Subject	Re: How to force copy retries until finally copied all due to a dying old HDD in Linux?
Date	2015-02-19 19:00 -0500
Organization	A noiseless patient Spider
Message-ID	<n1airb-lnv.ln1@pc.home> (permalink)
References	<wsednYGSWe_iyTTJnZ2dnUU7-UednZ2d@earthlink.com> <La2dncl-EqmA6zTJnZ2dnUU7-NmdnZ2d@earthlink.com> <m8c0m6$p8f$2@dont-email.me> <BtednS378fbxBzTJnZ2dnUU7-bmdnZ2d@giganews.com>

Cross-posted to 4 groups.

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In article <BtednS378fbxBzTJnZ2dnUU7-bmdnZ2d@giganews.com>,
Robert Heller  <heller@deepsoft.com> wrote:
> At Sun, 4 Jan 2015 18:27:18 +0000 (UTC) Rich <rich@example.invalid> wrote:
> 
> > 
> > In comp.os.linux.misc Ant <ant@zimage.comant> wrote:
> > > On 1/4/2015 7:23 AM, Robert Heller wrote:
> > 
> > > > dd can do that:
> > > >
> > > > dd ... conv=noerror
> > > >
> > > > man dd for full details.
> > > >
> > > > Basically, you do a raw DD of the 'bad' disk's file system (eg
> create a copy
> > > > of the file system either onto a new disk partition (of the proper
> size) or to
> > > > an image file.  Then you can mount the partition (or image via -o
> loop) and
> > > > then copy the files off.  Note: files with bad blocks will likely
> be 'broken'
> > > > and may not be usable, but you should be able to retrieve other files.
> > 
> > > This is more complex than I expected as a newbie. So, I can't copy files 
> > > directly like cp command? I do NOT need everything from the old dying 
> > > drive. I thought there was a way to do that to an existing HDD (don't 
> > > want to mess up my destination drive).
> > 
> > dd in="/old/drive/Mac OS X.dmg" out="/new/drive/that/is/not/broken/Mac
> OS X.dmg" conv=noerror
> > 
> > should work to "copy" a single file.  Change "in=" and "out=" files to
> > point to the ones you are trying to copy.
> > 
> > Note, that given the "errors" when reading the files, and the fact that
> > the example you gave is a mac dmg file, the result you get from the
> > "copy" process will likely be useless anyway.
> 
> Yes indeed. The 'best' option is to copy the whole file system (using dd
> conv=noerror) to a scratch disk or to a file image. Then go though the copy to
> pick out the files that are still usable. The OP seemed to want to copy
> everything still usable.  Doing dd on each file is very tedious, since dd does 
> not work with wildcards or multiple files.

No, but you can do something like this:

find "$srcdir" -type f | while read filename ; do
  dd if="$filename" of="$dest/$filename" conv=noerror
done

But I think you'd be better off using dd_rescue.

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