1 yr. ago • 95%

Create image from SSD with I/O errors

I have an SSD from a PC I no longer use. I need to keep a copy of all its data for backup purposes. The problem is that dd reports "Input/output error"s when copying from the drive. There seem to be 20-30 of them in the entire 240GB drive so it is likely that most or all of my data is still intact.

What I'm concerned about is whether these input/output errors can cause issues in the image outside of the particular bad blocks. How does dd handle these errors? Will they be eg zeroed in the output or will the simply be missing? If they are simply missing will the filesystem be corrupted because the location of data has been shifted? If so, what tool should I be using to save what can be saved?

EDIT: Thanks for the help guys. I went with ddrescue and it reports to have saved 99.99% of the data. I guess there could still be significant loss if the 0.01% happens to be on filesystem structures, but in this case maybe I can use an undeleter or similar utility to see if I can get back the files. In any case, I can work at my leisure now that I have a copy of the data on non-failing storage.

9 comments

Try ddrescue? That's usually pretty good at retrying repeatedly to read dodgy sectors.

You may not be able to recover these sectors, re-reading from failing NAND isn't always as easy as just re-trying a failed sector on an HDD, so once you've got your image you'll probably have to do some filesystem repair on it. Be sure you keep a clean copy of the image and do your repair against a copy of that, otherwise you're at risk of corrupting your only copy further.

25
- This is exactly what you should do. Additionally, don't forget to use a map file. Check the man page for information about this.
  
  With platters, you can sometimes attempt to freeze a disk in a ziplock bag (to prevent condensation). NAND is totally different, but it might not hurt to try it, especially if you have some cold solder joints. Do whatever recovery you can without these tricks first, though.
  
  Also, bear in mind that if you have a failing disk, you might get many more failures soon. Make good choices and work quickly to get your backup image.
  
  4
Use ddrescue.. but if there are lots of errors what you get back might not be that useful. Once you have a full image mount it loopback (losetup -Pf) and get the files that way.

Don't try to mount the ssd directly as you can make things worse if the OS tries to write to it.

11
Thanks for the input, guys. I consider my issue resolved.

As for the specific question I head, dd can fill with zeroes the blocks that failed to read with conv=noerror,sync. However, this puts the zeroes at the end of the block and not over the exact bit/byte that failed to read, meaning that a read error will invalidate the rest of the block.

But the consensus across source I searched seems to be to use ddrescue instead of dd.

2
- There is no particular bit or byte that is wrong. The drive is coming from an entire 128K to megabytes-large page that it couldn't make sense of. There was already a lot of error correction code tried, and the overall analog values of the page were re-tried (was this a 14/16th millivolt, or a 15/16th millivolt?). That page couldn't be made sense of, the MLC page overlaid on it couldn't be made sense of, the TLC page overlaid on that couldn't be made sense of, etc. Or things could also be so bad that the FTL doesn't even know which flash cells your data should be found in.
  
  Everything that I understand about flash storage suggests that it can't reasonably do little errors. You could still get small errors from a bit flip in delivery, or more likely flips in your PC's own ram. But the flash itself should either be very right, or very very wrong. Nothing in-between.
  
  2
  
  Thanks for the explanation. I don't really know how flash storage works. The fundamental idea of the problem I described would still apply, though as long as the input block size for dd extends to more than one page of the underlying storage.
  
  For example, say that exactly three pages fit in a block. If dd attempts to read pages A, B and C (ABC) and fails to read B, you would want the corresponding part zeroed in the output to preserve the offsets of all the other pages (A0C). But instead dd reads whatever it can for the entire block, then pads the rest of the block size with zeroes, effectively moving C forward (AC0). So essentially you magnify errors.
  
  1
Do you need an exact clone or just files? If they latter, mount the drive and use rsync to get what you can instead?

2
- I already have done an rsync copy. I noticed that some files failed to transfer and I thought that maybe the drive is failing. Wanting to attempt to debug and possibly rescue some more data (eg parts of big files that failed to transfer completely) without messing with the original copy, I tried dd and that's how we got here.
  
  Also this was a Windows system that was used daily by a family member and has a lot of installed background/tray services with saved logins. I imagine I could figure out everything there is to keep in an rsync clone, but it might be easier to have an image that I can try to mount to a VM and inspect "internally".
  
  So I don't need the clone strictly speaking but it would be nice to have. Plus, I would like to know the answer for the future as well.
  
  1
  
  A good point to suggest an alternate OS if they have no specific proprietary apps they rely on. Windows is a janky mess these days.
  
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