Restore files from partial, invalid backup from failed drive
Posted: Fri Nov 10, 2017 4:22 pm
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?
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?