Hard drive recovery 301

Let’s say you have a hard drive whose media is failing but whose controller card is still functional. Let’s further say you have a desire to pull a partition off that drive and see what’s still salvageable. And let’s further say you have a computer you’re okay with leaving on for a month or so to do it. All of these things were true about a hard drive that Glendon Mellow, The Flying Trilobite, sent along to me to try to recover — there were some family photos and tax returns that he hadn’t had backed up anyplace when the drive started failing. Being the samaritan that I am, I took the project on as a way to hone my own skills. I also had a feeling I could write a blog post afterward so others might benefit.

This isn’t a 101 level course. Hell, it’s not even a 201, as it assumes you know enough to use Linux’s terminal (no GUIs in this post!), and how to connect your hard drive through a USB adapter or directly. It also assumes the hard drive is in a specific state that it might still be readable even if Windows itself can’t get at the data. This last one is a fairly big assumption, and I trust you’re going to be able to identify when that’s the case.
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Hard drive recovery 301
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