Show the disks via Linux terminal
> lshw -short | grep disk
- lshw_short.png (9.04 KiB) Viewed 38619 times
General example
> ddrescue {source} {destination} {logfile}
Image to file on mounted drive (ie, /mnt/destination) that has enough free space to hold the full image of the source drive
> ddrescue /dev/sda /mnt/destination/driveimage.bin logfile.log
Image disk-to-disk
> ddrescue -f /dev/sda /dev/sdf logfile.log
The -f switch is to force the overwriting of the destination drive. Without this switch, ddrescue will not permit a drive-to-drive clone to start.
Note: the logfile will be stored in the location from which the command was run. You can always specify the direct path to store the log file, if needed.
A few useful switches, should you need them:
Generate a log file (considers all non-zeroed sectors as being unread):
Switch: -g
> ddrescue -g {source} {destination} newlogfile.log
No data is read from the source or written to the destination during this process.
Image in reverse:
Switch: -R
> ddrescue -R {source} {destination} logfile.log
Retries:
Switch: -r {# of retries}
> ddrescue -r 3 {source} {destination} logfile.log
To view all possible switches:
> ddrescue --help
Once your clone/image has completed and you want to attempt a file system recovery, I suggest trying R-Studio. It is quite simple to use and supports most common file systems and RAID recoveries.