Comment on How does harddrive failure work when there's multiple partitions?
geekworking@lemmy.world 6 months ago
It depends on the exact nature of the failure. Controller errors are usually a complete failure. Media failure (magnetic spots on the disk or failed cells in ssd) are often sporadic and only impact data stored in those spots.
Regardless, drives rarely give you any warning. Look at any warning as a gift and get everything off and replace it ASAP.
kevincox@lemmy.ml 6 months ago
Yup. I would try to stop using it if at all possible. As soon as you can dump a full disk image to some other storage. Tools like ddrescue can be useful as they will try to re-read failed sectors to get a more complete image.
Once you have the data (or at least as much is available) to a reliable medium then you can start sorting through it and discarding or saving individual bits.
AVincentInSpace@pawb.social 6 months ago
Seconding this. Op, get a new drive, get a live USB with ddrescue on it, and get that transfer started, stat.