Restore files from partial, invalid backup from failed drive

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karlinhigh
Posts: 2
Joined: Fri Nov 10, 2017 3:24 pm

Restore files from partial, invalid backup from failed drive

Post by karlinhigh »

Someone gave me their old, failing laptop. They wanted the hard drive erased. Sure, no problem; are there any files on there you still want? No, they have backups of everything. Trying to take no chances, I decided to use Image for Linux 2.99 and make a backup before I erased it. It found ~1,200 bad sectors on the drive, and gave up at some point. I didn't pay close attention, thinking - Okay, the drive is junk. At least I tried. No more caution. I went ahead with partedmagic.com/secure-erase just as I'd agreed to do. This program issues the ATA command to have the drive run its internal erase process.

BUT THEN the laptop person called back: they DID NOT have some of their files backed up up after all! Any chance they can still get them?

Well, let's see. Looks like I have a ~5GB TBI file out of a ~250GB hard drive. I know the backup file is invalid, but I am wondering if individual files could be recovered from this. When I try opening it with TBIView, it says "tbi is missing data written on completion." When I try imagew64.exe /recover, it immediately says "The image stream is corrupt. Please exit and restart the program." Is there anything else I could try?
TeraByte Support
Posts: 3598
Joined: Thu May 05, 2011 10:37 pm

Re: Restore files from partial, invalid backup from failed drive

Post by TeraByte Support »

did you try the 3.x version for /recover ?


"karlinhigh" wrote in message news:14372@public.image...

Someone gave me their old, failing laptop. They wanted the hard drive
erased. Sure, no problem; are there any files on there you still want? No,
they have backups of everything. Trying to take no chances, I decided to use
Image for Linux 2.99 and make a backup before I erased it. It found ~1,200
bad sectors on the drive, and gave up at some point. I didn't pay close
attention, thinking - Okay, the drive is junk. At least I tried. No more
caution. I went ahead with partedmagic.com/secure-erase just as I'd agreed
to do. This program issues the ATA command to have the drive run its
internal erase process.

BUT THEN the laptop person called back: they DID NOT have some of their
files backed up up after all! Any chance they can still get them?

Well, let's see. Looks like I have a ~5GB TBI file out of a ~250GB hard
drive. I know the backup file is invalid, but I am wondering if individual
files could be recovered from this. When I try opening it with TBIView, it
says "tbi is missing data written on completion." When I try imagew64.exe
/recover, it immediately says "The image stream is corrupt. Please exit and
restart the program." Is there anything else I could try?

karlinhigh
Posts: 2
Joined: Fri Nov 10, 2017 3:24 pm

Re: Restore files from partial, invalid backup from failed d

Post by karlinhigh »

Okay, got the upgrade to 3.x version. Here's the log, trying to restore the partial TBI to a VHD virtual drive.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
[11/13/2017 7:36:15 AM] C:\Program Files (x86)\TeraByte Drive Image Backup and Restore Suite\imagew64.exe /recover
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
[11/13/2017 7:40:09 AM] Image for Windows (x64) 3.13
[11/13/2017 7:40:09 AM] Starting ...
imagew64.exe /v0:"<path>.vhd" /d:v0 /f:"<path>"
[11/13/2017 7:40:09 AM] Restoring: MBR 0 Partition (01) 39 MiB Dell Utility
[11/13/2017 7:40:09 AM] To: Drive 0 (VIRT) ------- Partition (80) 327677 MiB Free Space
[11/13/2017 7:40:09 AM] From: <path>.tbi
[11/13/2017 7:40:09 AM] Restoring: RECOVERY Partition (02) 15000 MiB NTFS
[11/13/2017 7:40:09 AM] To: Drive 0 (VIRT) ------- Partition (80) 327638 MiB Free Space
[11/13/2017 7:40:09 AM] From: <path>.tbi
[11/13/2017 7:40:40 AM] Restoring: OS Partition (03) 223435 MiB NTFS
[11/13/2017 7:40:40 AM] To: Drive 0 (VIRT) ------- Partition (80) 312632 MiB Free Space
[11/13/2017 7:40:40 AM] From: <path>.tbi
[11/13/2017 7:40:40 AM] Error 94 occurred while processing file <path>.tbi
[11/13/2017 7:40:40 AM] Time Elapsed: 0:00:00:31
[11/13/2017 7:40:40 AM] Warning: Recovery mode encountered 2 problems.
[11/13/2017 7:40:40 AM] Operation Completed with Error Code 94
[11/13/2017 7:40:40 AM] ABORT: Data corruption was encountered.

Please exit and restart the program.
[11/13/2017 7:40:52 AM] Stop
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