On Mon, Dec 18, 2017 at 08:06:07AM -0600, Richard Owlett wrote:
Background:
I did my first Debian install with Jessie.
I then went on to multi-boot a variety of versions and preferences.
There was always an install of current "old-stable" present.
Current problem:
I intend to wipe everything from dev /sda and do a fresh install using
configurations and partitioning that I've discovered that meet my
individualist requirements.
Preserving content of most partitions can be done with Clonezilla.
However one partition was corrupted. I found some data retrieval tools
which recovered most, but not all, data. I want a byte perfect copy of
that partition such that in the future I can attempt to retrieve more
data.
If you suspect the disk is damaged, take a look at ddrescue (debian
package: gddrescue). This can perform various "tricks" on a damaged disk
(jumping over a failing sector, reading forwards and backwards around
the damage, etc) in order to extract as much useful data as possible.