[Discuss] Advice: Best approach to data recovery from failed LINUX ext4 Hard Drive

[Murray Strome]

I have a 2TB WD Black HD that has failed. I can still see the partitions, but cannot mount them. SMART shows many bad sectors, and that it has failed, but at least it is detectable. There are many FOSS data recovery tools out there, and I know that you should get as much data off as soon as possible and as "gently" as possible as the disk is most likely to keep getting worse until it fails so completely that nothing short of an expensive data recovery company will be able to get anything from it. Here is a recent list: 
[ https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/top-best-linux-data-recovery-tools | https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/top-best-linux-data-recovery-tools ] 

I have used TestDisk and PhotoRec to recover accidentally deleted files. However, that is not the current situation--the files weren't deleted. The disk is failing and corrupt which is different. Most of the tools listed seem to be most useful for accidentally deleted files and/or fixing MBR. 

>From what I see in the list, it appears that Autopsy might be the best one to try. Has anyone used this, and if so, how successful was the operation? 

Thanks for any help. 

Murray 



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://vlug.org/pipermail/discuss_vlug.org/attachments/20220814/eef8e9c9/attachment.html>