Ddrescue

DDrescue is a tool that helps to recover lost files from a damaged or failing hard drive. Imagine you have a big box of toys and some of them are broken or missing pieces. DDrescue helps you to carefully pick up the broken pieces and put them back together to make the toy whole again.

When a hard drive starts to fail, it reads and writes data slower than usual or not at all. It's like a puzzle with some missing pieces that you need to put back together. DDrescue helps to make a copy of the entire hard drive, so you can work on the puzzle without damaging the original data.

DDrescue slowly but surely reads the entire hard drive, skipping problematic areas and making perfect copies of the data it can recover. It's like a robot that carefully moves around obstacles to reach the next piece and logs where it has been to avoid going in circles.

After all the data has been copied, DDrescue goes back to the problematic areas to retry reading them, like a human who tries to remember where they last saw a lost toy piece. This process is repeated until there are no more missing pieces.

The end result is a recovered copy of all the data on the failing hard drive, like a complete set of toys. DDrescue is a helpful tool for anyone who wants to salvage important data from a damaged or failing hard drive.