Hard Disk Failure

[aluminumsulfate at earthlink.net]

   From: Bill McGonigle <bill at bfccomputing.com>
   Date: Sun, 26 Feb 2006 15:52:34 -0500

   On Feb 26, 2006, at 15:31, aluminumsulfate at earthlink.net wrote:

   > okay, okay, so maybe my command can't copy the partitions
   > BACKWARDS...but... *scratches head*

   .... but often sectors that won't read forward will read backwards.  I 
   don't understand the drive physics, but I've recovered drives with 

I'm willing to bet money that's not true.  The "drive physics" of
recovering data with dd_rescue are no different than any other fs
access (including using dd).  dd_resuce *probably* just lseek(2)s
along the drive from back to front.

   I'm sure the guys who write these programs understand dd well and more 
   about drives than we do.

To confirm my suspicion that the author of this program is in fact a
GUI baby, I just downloaded a copy of

11124beac799890c3048c9a5ccf4746b  dd_rescue.c

The code uses open(2) to open the input file... which gains you
nothing over stock dd. I honestly can't think a reason to even run gcc
on this program. ?!

Dave
--
  "So many people like XML because so few people understand Scheme."