GNU ddrescue is a data recovery software used to recover lost data from damaged or corrupted storage media. It is designed to retrieve data from any sector of a hard drive or CD-ROM, as well as external devices, with its intuitive interface and advanced features.
What's great about ddrescue is that it won't truncate the output file unless you specifically ask it to. This means that each time you run it on the same output file, it will attempt to fill in any gaps that may have been missed previously.
Furthermore, ddrescue is fully automatic, so you don't need to wait for an error to occur, stop the program, read the log, or run it in reverse mode. It's designed to make data recovery as seamless as possible. If you choose to use the logfile feature, ddrescue will rescue data in a highly efficient manner, only reading the blocks that are necessary.
Another great feature of ddrescue is its ability to interrupt the recovery process at any time and resume it later from the exact same point. This can be incredibly helpful if you need to take a break or if you encounter unexpected issues.
In addition, if you have multiple damaged copies of a file, cdrom, or other device, ddrescue can automatically merge backups. By running ddrescue on each copy one at a time with the same output file, you can obtain a complete and error-free file. The logfile feature only reads the necessary blocks from the second and successive copies, making the recovery process more efficient.
Finally, ddrescue aligns its I/O buffer to the sector size, which enables it to read from raw devices. For optimal efficiency, it also aligns to the memory page size if page size is a multiple of sector size. Overall, GNU ddrescue is a reliable data recovery tool that's definitely worth checking out.
Version 1.11: N/A