New HP dv6 laptop and Knoppix (recovering data from damaged drive)

[Greg Rundlett (freephile)]

On Tue, Dec 15, 2009 at 11:22 PM, Ben Scott <dragonhawk at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 15, 2009 at 9:36 PM, Michael ODonnell
> <michael.odonnell at comcast.net> wrote:
>> Note that dd_rescue (rather than plain old dd) will atempt to continue the
>> copy operation even when it encounters bad sectors ...
>
>  There's also dd_rhelp, a wrapper for dd_rescue which will recover
> the easy data first, and then focus on re-reading bad blocks
> repeatedly in an attempt to coax the data off a not-quite-dead drive.
>

Also note that from the dd_rhelp page:

"We are all knowing that a quick C program should be better. So feel free
to create it ! And this is what Antonio Diaz did for its "GNU
ddrescue" program, make sure to have a look to it before using
dd_rhelp."

So, use GNU ddrescue, not dd_rescue, nor dd_rhelp.
http://www.gnu.org/software/ddrescue/ddrescue.html