So far I got a crashed 320GB external usb case 2.5″ form factor… well the disk was not in that bad shape the controller had short circuit and traces of burn so, time to disassemble and use another usb case…

I was wondering what was the difference between dd_rescue and ddrescue [1] but the description was not that good, going directly to gnu page got [2] an explanation about the algorithm and that convinced me that I was using the wrong tool (dd_rescue) anyway this is how it looks.

root@avalon:~# ddrescue --no-split /dev/sde /home/F/320GB/image1.dd rescue.chema.log Press Ctrl-C to interrupt Initial status (read from logfile) rescued:         0 B,  errsize:       0 B,  errors:       0 Current status rescued:    45307 MB,  errsize:    471 MB,  current rate:    95680 B/s ipos:    45778 MB,   errors:    4834,    average rate:    1043 kB/s opos:    45778 MB,     time from last successful read:       0 s Copying non-tried blocks...

Update: ddrescue started march 5 and ended march 8 three days later, and got a 299GB file to work:

root@avalon:~# ls /home/F/320GB/image* -lah -rw-r----- 1 root root 299G Mar 8 20:02 /home/F/320GB/image1.dd

[1] http://www.forensicswiki.org/wiki/Ddrescue
[2] http://www.gnu.org/software/ddrescue/manual/ddrescue_manual.html#Algorithm