Boot into the Ubuntu Live CD environment using a burnt CD or a prepared flash drive.
First, we’ll installddrescue.
Open up the Synaptic Package Manager (System > Administration > Synaptic Package Manager).
In the Synaptic Package Manager window, select options > Repositories.
Add a check in the box whose label ends with “universe” to enable Ubuntu’s universe repository.
Back in the main Synaptic window, smack the Reload button to reload the list of available packages.
Once the search index has been rebuilt, enter “ddrescue” in the Quick search text field.
Right press “gddrescue” and select Mark for Installation.
smack the Apply button, and follow the prompts to installddrescue.
Next, we need to select a location to save the .iso file that will be produced byddrescue.
In our case, we’ll use an internal NTFS hard drive.
To mount it, we’ll choose Places and then grab the hard drive we want to use.
Navigate to the location in which you will save the .iso file.
Once you’re in the right directory, you’re ready to runddrescue!
The “-b” flag is important because CDs have block sizes of 2048 bytes.
Eventually ddrescue will finish, possibly with some errors.
In our case, there were around 80 MB of data that were not recovered due to errors.
For more information about command line parameters ddrescue recognizes, seeits manual.
If we left it longer, we may have been able to recover even more.
If you tried tomake a drive image withddand it gave you errors, then giveddrescuea try instead!
