Recover .mp4 file from WD with bad sectors

[Borstalbhoy]

Hi there,

I am helping a friend with her WD MyPassport WD40NMZW-11GX6S1.

She's a videographer and has an important file on the disc that started to throw up errors reading and writing. HDD inspection tools confirmed bad sectors.
Certain files can be copied, but some not due to bad sectors and it's exactly this one .mp4 file she needs. Disc is formatted in HFS+ she's been using with her MacOS on Catalina.
I am on PC and have since been able to extract a 4GB fragment of the file via UFS Explorer Professional Recovery by reading out the hex code.
I was then able to restore 6min of the video successfully using a tool called "recover_mp4".

But the sad thing is that the show was 30min long, so I am missing some 24min. Hence I need your assistance on how to proceed.

I am now thinking to use ddrescue via linux to make an image of parts of the disc (is that possible?) and then try further restoration/fixing methods on the image.

Very thankful for any suggestions here before continuing.

Boxhamster

P.S.: We checked the SD card. Unfortunately my friend used the camera, including formatting and filming. So it's not there anymore. Wish she told me about the problem earlier before trying to doctor around herself. She thought it was just a MacOS issue.

[lcoughey]

First off, if the data is of value, it is probably better to take it to a recovery professional before further damage is caused. It sounds like the heads are starting to crash and the more it is powered on, the more damage that is being caused.

But, with the idea that you don't care if you completely kill the drive in your attempts, I suggest you start by attempting to get a full sector-by-sector clone of the drive and then make your software recovery attempts against the healthy copy drive.

[fzabkar]

If it's just one file that you need, then consider ...

Bad Block Copy for Windows:
alter.org.ua/soft/win/bb_recover/

Ddrescue (and HDDSuperClone ?) can also clone single files. No need for a full HDD clone, AISI.

Of course, these tools need to be able to recognise (and mount?) the file system if recovering in file mode.

[RolandJS]

Please tell us that she is going to begin and maintain, going forward, from now on, a routine of making backups onto external media.