I've got a crash and the system won't boot correctly. I am getting errors like:
ata3.00: status: { DRDY }
ata3.00: status: { UNC }
What would be the best way to save the main drive to make the system boot again?
I am looking at:
Using DD for disk cloning
I read that using DD to clone a live system is bad. But does booting in via KVM mean just as bad?
Best Answer
You don't want to do a block level copy of a drive when any of the filesystems are mounted (which also means that you can't be running the OS installed on the drive). Either boot a live CD/USB (I like RIPLinux) or connect the drive to another machine.
In terms of getting data off a dodgy drive, rather use ddrescue (the GNU version, sometimes called gddrescue). It won't stop as soon as it encounters a bad sector like
dd
will, and can resume copies. Make sure to specify a log file: