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Data recovery question

1K views 10 replies 2 participants last post by  Blade_Jones 
#1 ·
This is just a question of curiosity. When recovering an IMAGE file off of a drive, such as with R-Studio or GetDataBack, does the entire image have to be in tact? Or can SOME of the individual data files (documents, pictures, etc) be recovered if the image file is partially corrupted or written over some bad sectors or written on a drive with a damaged partition table, etc?
 
#2 ·
Lots of issues with your questions. First what do mean by IMAGE are we talking about a picture or a complete Hard Drive Image File of a drive ?

I recover data from damaged drives all the time and some items are recoverable where others are damaged and not recoverable if that answers your question this can be due to damaged sectors poor read write heads on the drive. If the partition table is damaged then most of the time you don't get back the file names just the raw data of documents and pictures music etc with random names
 
#3 · (Edited)
Not a picture. I mean an image, such as the image that backup software creates. Lets assume that there are some permanently damaged sectors on the drive and part of that large image file was written over those bad, unrecoverable sectors. Is that entire image gone? Probably no chance of recovering any of the individual files contained within that image?

If it's JUST the partition table that's damaged, can the image file be recovered usually?
 
#4 ·
normally the image file such as one made with DD will remain in tact since its either one large file or a series of files that may be 4GB or less in size each just depends on how it was created. Now a backup file is a tad different in how its setup and I have seen them corrupted and some software tools can recover from them. I have not yet encountered a dd image file that was corrupted in the hypothetical setting you have proposed. If the drive knows sectors are bad it adds them to the G-List and wouldn't write data to them when the image file is being written to the drive that is holding the image. I guess it could happen but I have yet to see that myself.

I had a drive that contained a LARGE image file 500GB and the partition table got hosed by my own mistake I was NOT able to recover the image file since it doesn't have a known header type which is how a lot of the software data recovery tools identify and recover files lost or deleted.

I don't know if any of this answers your questions so let me know
 
#6 ·
I know their is a software tool on the market that can recover damaged Microsoft backup files and Seagate Backup Exec files. I think the Acronis format is compressed which makes it much more difficult where as a DD image is not compressed.
 
#8 ·
Are we still talking about an Acronis TIB image? If you can mount the image you can recover single files I havent checked lately if any of those can work on the tib compressed format in the past they were not able to
 
#9 ·
If you can mount the image you can recover single files
Will the image "mount" if it is partially corrupted (such as if the read heads of the drive scrapped across part of the platter from being dropped or something)? If not then it would seem that backing up data as an image has it's risks if the drive becomes damaged. Better to just back up raw data.
I had a customer who had only one copy of some critical data on a USB drive. They had it saved as an image file using ArcSoft. They erased the original files off of their C drive. I told them to keep more than one copy (obviously), and that having a raw data backup was better than just having 1 image backup in the event that part of the image were to become corrupted. Better to lose a few files than the entire thing.
 
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