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External Hard Drive Crash

Asked by Abhishek

The last time my hard drive was dying, I somehow managed to copy the data from it to another storage device. At that time I couldnt access the hard drive through the UI, but I found a command & I accessed the hard drive through the terminal. It wasnt ddrescue or any other similar thing. I clearly remember that I could see the folders & files of the hard drive displayed in a list & I had the option of copying the contents onto another hard drive the hard drive died after that. Can someone please tell me what that command or program is?

Thanks,
Abhishek

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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#1

Foremost maybe. Or Scalpel.

I suggest you start making a backup. Then you wouldn't care as the data can be easily restored.

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Abhishek (nodruggie) said : 		#2

Really sorry, I forgot to mention that my external drive is dying, l need the command for that.

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Thomas Krüger (thkrueger) said : 		#3

At very first, before doing any stuff with it. You should create an image of the drives partitions. You will abviously need a lot of space for that, but that is the most save way. Run…

dd if=/dev/sd?? of=extdrive.img conv=noerror

…and replace the question marks with the right device name (like /dev/sdb1). Depending on the rights you have, you might need to put "sudo " before the commands and set the permissions to the file right afterwards.

A hint from my personal experience: problematic hard drives are often working better for a while when chilled. But make use there is no condensation water produces.

When you have the image, you have all the time in the world to try the commands Andrew wrote.

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Abhishek (nodruggie) said : 		#4

I donot have enough space on my primary hard drive to make an image.

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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#5

You will need space to spit found files to. Why is there not a backup copy?

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Daniel Letzeisen (dtl131) said : 		#6

If it's physically dying/clicking, it simply may not be readable. Pick you favorite term for that... ("Given up the ghost", "Let out the magic smoke", "Borked", etc.)
In that case, your best option is to take it to a data recovery service (if it's worth it) and hope the disk platter wasn't physically damaged.

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Abhishek (nodruggie) said : 		#7

The data isnt very important, but i still need it & data recovery center charges would go hrough the roof...thats why i need that one command, last time as well my drive was clicking, i accessed it with one simple command

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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#8

Click of death is a failing drive. Try dd_rescue to make an image of the storage.

If the data is unimportant why are we still in this flow of back and forth? Destroy the drive with a hammer and get a new one.

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Daniel Letzeisen (dtl131) said : 		#9

>> thats why i need that one command, last time as well my drive was clicking, i accessed it with one simple
command

Again, that does not mean it will work this time. It depends on the condition of the drive...

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james truax (procon2) said : 		#10

I would use gparted

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