The sys admin's daily grind: ddrescue and DDRescue-GUI
Recovery Needed
Sometimes even sys admin Charly doesn't have a backup at hand; or, maybe it's ruined because the removed disk had corrupt data. Here, he offers some advice on how to handle the situation.
Krrr, krrr …! At least things are clear-cut when a hard disk gives up the ghost: You toss the offending disk, get a new one, and put the backup on it. However, those undead data media – that trick people into continuing working on them with no idea of the potential impact – are a real pain.
I recently determined that an SDHC card in my camera saves one out of 20 images (on average) as a colorful mess of pixels. I do know that memory cards give up the ghost sooner or later. However, I didn't realize that my camera could save to two cards simultaneously – a feature I stupidly didn't use. But, I'm all the wiser now.
What if really important data is stored on a haywire device that you just can't get rid of? This is where ddrescue
[1] comes in. The tool is already quite ancient, but its developers look after it untiringly and adapt it to new types of data media. (It should not be confused with the even older dd_rescue
.) Ddrescue is officially named GNU ddrescue; the packages on Debian and derivatives are therefore dubbed gddrescue
.
[...]
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.

News
-
Linux Hits an Important Milestone
If you pay attention to the news in the Linux-sphere, you've probably heard that the open source operating system recently crashed through a ceiling no one thought possible.
-
Plasma Bigscreen Returns
A developer discovered that the Plasma Bigscreen feature had been sitting untouched, so he decided to do something about it.
-
CachyOS Now Lets Users Choose Their Shell
Imagine getting the opportunity to select which shell you want during the installation of your favorite Linux distribution. That's now a thing.
-
Wayland 1.24 Released with Fixes and New Features
Wayland continues to move forward, while X11 slowly vanishes into the shadows, and the latest release includes plenty of improvements.
-
Bugs Found in sudo
Two critical flaws allow users to gain access to root privileges.
-
Fedora Continues 32-Bit Support
In a move that should come as a relief to some portions of the Linux community, Fedora will continue supporting 32-bit architecture.
-
Linux Kernel 6.17 Drops bcachefs
After a clash over some late fixes and disagreements between bcachefs's lead developer and Linus Torvalds, bachefs is out.
-
ONLYOFFICE v9 Embraces AI
Like nearly all office suites on the market (except LibreOffice), ONLYOFFICE has decided to go the AI route.
-
Two Local Privilege Escalation Flaws Discovered in Linux
Qualys researchers have discovered two local privilege escalation vulnerabilities that allow hackers to gain root privileges on major Linux distributions.
-
New TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro Powered by AMD Ryzen AI 300
The TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro 14 Gen10 offers serious power that is ready for your business, development, or entertainment needs.