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  • From: "Scott G. Hall" <ScottGHall AT BellSouth.Net>
  • To: "Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/" <internetworkers AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [internetworkers] ooops - data recovery needed
  • Date: Sun, 08 Mar 2009 18:23:17 -0400

This is where a different non-Microsoft operating system and open
source comes to the rescue...

{to those of you already familiar with *IX systems the following may
seem simplistic, but there are those not so familiar with them}

1) Boot up a linux (or UnixWare or Solaris or BSD) system. Though you
might be tempted to use a live CD version, you will need your CD
drive free to read the disc-to-be-recovered. If it were me, I would
have a spare machine around running one of the *IX's or at least
installed as a dual-boot on my main machine. Barring all of that,
you can boot to a live USB-stick version.

2) Open a terminal window and get to a command-line prompt. One of
the universal ways to do this without going through the graphics
screens is ALT-F1 -- almost all *IX's for Intel machines have 4
terminals defined at ALT-F1, ALT-F2, ALT-F3 and ALT-F4. You can
click on a terminal window from the graphical screen as well.

3) Use the old stand-by, the "disk dump" command: dd. This is a
sector-by-sector copy program that includes every byte on the
device, even any filesystems on it. This is essentially the
easiest way to get an 'image' of a device. The resulting output
file can even be "mounted" on *IX systems like it were the device.

You need to tell it that the "input file" is the CD-RW drive that
the disc in question is in. Most of the *IX's provide this as a
filename at /dev/cdrom or /dev/cdrom0. Then you need to tell it
the "output file" somewhere you can save the result. This can be
a flash card, USB drive, or the harddisk on the system. How you
get there will be different for each system, but the graphical
screen will usually have a help system or browser to help you.

A disc device has sectors sized at 512 bytes, but that will take
a long time to copy.

The command becomes: dd b=512 if=/dev/cdrom0 of=/mnt/somefilename

4) Then you can play to your heart's content on the resulting image file.

SB wrote:
I've been handed a CD-RW data recover problem. Since I don't know much about this particular area I'd really appreciate suggestions on the best way to tackle it. Here's what I know so far:

It might also be a good idea to take a full sector-by-sector image copy before I start (so I can get back to the start position for another try if I mess something up) - what would be the best way to do this ?

--
Scott G. Hall
Raleigh, NC, USA
ScottGHall AT BellSouth.Net





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