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diff --git a/posts/2019-09-28-my-preferred-method-for-data-recovery.html b/posts/2019-09-28-my-preferred-method-for-data-recovery.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9751eda --- /dev/null +++ b/posts/2019-09-28-my-preferred-method-for-data-recovery.html @@ -0,0 +1,276 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html> + <head> + <link rel="stylesheet" href="/includes/stylesheet.css" /> + <meta charset="utf-8" /> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1" /> + <meta + property="og:description" + content="The World Wide Web pages of Adam Carpenter" + /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://nextcloud.53hor.net/index.php/s/Nx9e7iHbw4t99wo/preview" /> + <meta property="og:site_name" content="53hor.net" /> + <meta property="og:title" content="How I Do Data Recovery" /> + <meta property="og:type" content="website" /> + <meta property="og:url" content="https://www.53hor.net" /> + <title>53hornet ➙ How I Do Data Recovery</title> + </head> + + <body> + <nav> + <ul> + <li> + <a href="/"> + <img src="/includes/icons/home-roof.svg" /> + Home + </a> + </li> + <li> + <a href="/info.html"> + <img src="/includes/icons/information-variant.svg" /> + Info + </a> + </li> + <li> + <a href="https://git.53hor.net"> + <img src="/includes/icons/git.svg" /> + Repos + </a> + </li> + <li> + <a href="/hosted.html"> + <img src="/includes/icons/desktop-tower.svg" /> + Hosted + </a> + </li> + <li> + <a type="application/rss+xml" href="/rss.xml"> + <img src="/includes/icons/rss.svg" /> + RSS + </a> + </li> + </ul> + </nav> + + <article> + <h1>How I Do Data Recovery</h1> + + <p> + This week Amy plugged in her flash drive to discover that there were no + files on it. Weeks before there had been dozens of large cuts of footage + that she needed to edit down for work. Hours of recordings were + seemingly gone. And the most annoying part was the drive had worked + perfectly on several other occasions. Just not now that the footage was + actually needed of course. Initially it looked like everything had been + wiped clean, however both Amy's Mac and her PC thought the drive was + half full. It's overall capacity was 64GB but it showed only about 36GB + free. So there still had to be data on there if we could find the right + tool to salvage it. + </p> + + <p> + Luckily this wasn't the first time I had to recover accidentally (or + magically) deleted files. I had previously done so with some success at + my tech support job, for some college friends, and for my in-laws' + retired laptops. So I had a pretty clear idea of what to expect. The + only trick was finding a tool that knew what files it was looking for. + The camera that took the video clips was a Sony and apparently they + record into <code>m2ts</code> files, which are kind of a unique format + in that they only show up on Blu-Ray discs and Sony camcorders. Enter my + favorite two tools for dealing with potentially-destroyed data: + <code>ddrescue</code> and <code>photorec</code>. + </p> + + <h2>DDRescue</h2> + + <p> + <code>ddrescue</code> is a godsend of a tool. If you've ever used + <code>dd</code> before, forget about it. Use <code>ddrescue</code>. You + might as well <code>alias dd=ddrescue</code> because it's that great. By + default it has a plethora of additional options, displays the progress + as it works, recovers and retries in the event of I/O errors, and does + everything that good old <code>dd</code> can do. It's particularly good + at protecting partitions or disks that have been corrupted or damaged by + rescuing undamaged portions first. Oh, and have you ever had to cancel a + <code>dd</code> operation? Did I mention that <code>ddrescue</code> can + pause and resume operations? It's that good. + </p> + + <h2>PhotoRec</h2> + + <p> + <code>photorec</code> is probably the best missing file recovery tool + I've ever used in my entire life. And I've used quite a few. I've never + had as good results as I've had with <code>photorec</code> with other + tools like Recuva et. al. And <code>photorec</code> isn't just for + photos, it can recover documents (a la Office suite), music, images, + config files, and videos (including the very odd + <code>m2ts</code> format!). The other nice thing is + <code>photorec</code> will work on just about any source. It's also free + software which makes me wonder why there are like $50 recovery tools for + Windows that look super sketchy. + </p> + + <h2>In Practice</h2> + + <p> + So here's what I did to get Amy's files back. Luckily she didn't write + anything out to the drive afterward so the chances (I thought) were + pretty good that I would get <em>something</em> back. The first thing I + always do is make a full image of whatever media I'm trying to recover + from. I do this for a couple of reasons. First of all it's a backup. If + something goes wrong during recovery I don't have to worry about the + original, fragile media being damaged or wiped. Furthermore, I can work + with multiple copies at a time. If it's a large image that means + multiple tools or even multiple PCs can work on it at once. It's also + just plain faster working off a disk image than a measly flash drive. So + I used <code>ddrescue</code> to make an image of Amy's drive. + </p> + + <pre><code> +$ sudo ddrescue /dev/sdb1 amy-lexar.dd +GNU ddrescue 1.24 +Press Ctrl-C to interrupt + ipos: 54198 kB, non-trimmed: 0 B, current rate: 7864 kB/s + opos: 54198 kB, non-scraped: 0 B, average rate: 18066 kB/s +non-tried: 63967 MB, bad-sector: 0 B, error rate: 0 B/s + rescued: 54198 kB, bad areas: 0, run time: 2s +pct rescued: 0.08%, read errors: 0, remaining time: 59m + time since last successful read: n/a +Copying non-tried blocks... Pass 1 (forwards) + </code></pre> + + <p> + The result was a very large partition image that I could fearlessly play + around with. + </p> + + <pre> + <code> +$ ll amy-lexar.dd +-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 60G Sep 24 02:45 amy-lexar.dd + </code> + </pre> + + <p> + Then I could run <code>photorec</code> on the image. This brings up a + TUI with all of the listed media that I can try and recover from. + </p> + + <pre><code> +$ sudo photorec amy-lexar.dd + +PhotoRec 7.0, Data Recovery Utility, April 2015 +http://www.cgsecurity.org + + PhotoRec is free software, and +comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. + +Select a media (use Arrow keys, then press Enter): +>Disk amy-lexar.dd - 64 GB / 59 GiB (RO) + +>[Proceed ] [ Quit ] + +Note: +Disk capacity must be correctly detected for a successful recovery. +If a disk listed above has incorrect size, check HD jumper settings, BIOS +detection, and install the latest OS patches and disk drivers. + </code></pre> + + <p> + After hitting proceed <code>photorec</code> asks if you want to scan + just a particular partition or the whole disk (if you made a whole disk + image). I can usually get away with just selecting the partition I know + the files are on and starting a search. + </p> + + <pre><code> +PhotoRec 7.0, Data Recovery Utility, April 2015 +http://www.cgsecurity.org + +Disk amy-lexar.dd - 64 GB / 59 GiB (RO) + + Partition Start End Size in sectors + Unknown 0 0 1 7783 139 4 125042656 [Whole disk] +> P FAT32 0 0 1 7783 139 4 125042656 [NO NAME] + +>[ Search ] [Options ] [File Opt] [ Quit ] + Start file recovery + </code></pre> + + <p> + Then <code>photorec</code> asks a couple of questions about the + formatting of the media. It can usually figure them out all by itself so + I just use the default options unless it's way out in left field. + </p> + + <pre><code> +PhotoRec 7.0, Data Recovery Utility, April 2015 +http://www.cgsecurity.org + + P FAT32 0 0 1 7783 139 4 125042656 [NO NAME] + +To recover lost files, PhotoRec need to know the filesystem type where the +file were stored: + [ ext2/ext3 ] ext2/ext3/ext4 filesystem +>[ Other ] FAT/NTFS/HFS+/ReiserFS/... + </code></pre> + + <p> + Now this menu is where I don't just go with the default path. + <code>photorec</code> will offer to search just unallocated space or the + entire partition. I always go for the whole partition here; sometimes + I'll get back files that I didn't really care about but more often than + not I end up rescuing more data this way. In this scenario searching + just unallocated space found no files at all. So I told + <code>photorec</code> to search everything. + </p> + + <pre><code> +PhotoRec 7.0, Data Recovery Utility, April 2015 +http://www.cgsecurity.org + + P FAT32 0 0 1 7783 139 4 125042656 [NO NAME] + + +Please choose if all space need to be analysed: + [ Free ] Scan for file from FAT32 unallocated space only +>[ Whole ] Extract files from whole partition + </code></pre> + + <p> + Now it'll ask where you want to save any files it finds. I threw them + all into a directory under home that I could zip up and send to Amy's + Mac later. + </p> + + <pre><code> +PhotoRec 7.0, Data Recovery Utility, April 2015 + +Please select a destination to save the recovered files. +Do not choose to write the files to the same partition they were stored on. +Keys: Arrow keys to select another directory + C when the destination is correct + Q to quit +Directory /home/adam + drwx------ 1000 1000 4096 28-Sep-2019 12:10 . + drwxr-xr-x 0 0 4096 26-Jan-2019 15:32 .. +>drwxr-xr-x 1000 1000 4096 28-Sep-2019 12:10 amy-lexar-recovery + </code></pre> + + <p> + And then just press <code>C</code>. <code>photrec</code> will start + copying all of the files it finds into that directory. It reports what + kinds of files it found and how many it was able to locate. I was able + to recover all of Amy's lost footage this way, past, along with some + straggler files that had been on the drive at one point. This has worked + for me many times in the past, both on newer devices like flash drives + and on super old, sketchy IDE hard drives. I probably won't ever pay for + data recovery unless a drive has been physically damaged in some way. In + other words, this software works great for me and I don't foresee the + need for anything else out there. It's simple to use and is typically + pretty reliable. + </p> + </article> + </body> +</html> |