myrescue

myrescue is a program designed to extract still-readable data from damaged storage media such as hard disks, CD-ROMs, DVDs, and flash drives. It operates by quickly skipping over damaged areas to first recover data from undamaged sections, returning to problematic areas later. This approach makes it particularly effective for partial recoveries where complete reads would fail.

The tool is valuable for general data recovery scenarios and forensics investigations, where preserving evidence from compromised media is critical. It generates bitmap files tracking block statuses, which can be analyzed for insights into media health.

Companion tools like myrescue-bitmap2ppm for visualization and myrescue-stat for statistics enhance its utility in assessing recovery progress and media condition.

myrescue reads blocks from the input file using a configurable block size (default 4096 bytes), starting from a specified start block and up to an end block. It employs strategies like exponential skipping of errors (-S), aborting on errors (-A), skipping blocks with excessive failures (-f), and retrying reads (-r). Options like -G focus on areas around good blocks, -F skips around failed ones, and -T avoids slow-reading blocks. A bitmap file tracks block states: 0 (unhandled), 1 (successfully copied), 2 (slow success, near-dead), negative (failed attempts). Direction can be reversed (-R), and USB resets are supported (-U).