Note such limitation is not a Unix-y design. recovery tool) that cannot use a regular file a tool that insists on working with an actual disk. You need to boot from the copy like you used to boot from the failing disk.There are at least two scenarios when copying directly to /dev/sdc is justified: And you can copy them to the very same filesystem that holds the image. Useful commands: losetup, kpartx or just mount -o offset=вЂ¦. And you can mount filesystem(s) from it (assuming ddrescue managed to read enough data for the filesystem(s) to be mountable). Having an image of the entire disk as a regular file, you can examine its partition table, if any (assuming ddrescue managed to read it), with gdisk -l /path/to/image or some equivalent command. I believe ZFS is similarly useful but I have no experience with it. In case of any trouble I still have the original file, I can always start anew. All operations that modify the image (e.g.

After ddrescue finishes I remove write permission from the image, create its copy ( cp -reflink=always вЂ¦) which initially takes virtually no additional space. I use Btrfs for this even when I don't need compression, because Btrfs supports copy-on-write. But read the whole current answer before you decide. Please see Uses of single-partition disk configuration. The filesystem may be in a partition ( /dev/sdc1) or on the entire device ( /dev/sdc). Create a filesystem in the target drive, even without compression, and the image and the mapfile will fit. But in your case of a failing drive this approach is not recommended.ДЇortunately you said (in a comment) that 'the target drive is double the size of the failing one'. If the source drive was healthy, you could do this: Clone only space in use from hard disk. However there is no easy way to tell in advance if data can be compressed/sparsified enough. But even if the target disk is not bigger, a filesystem with compression and/or the -S/ -sparse option of ddrescue may be enough to squeeze the image into the filesystem. This will work well if the target disk is bigger than the source one, so even after the filesystem takes some space for its structures there will be enough room for the image (of the size of the source disk) and the mapfile.

Let the mapfile be another regular file in the same filesystem (sane idea: in the same directory). Where do i write the log file (map file) Can I also write that to the new target disk?Д¬reate a filesystem on the target disk, mount it and tell ddrescue to write to a regular file in the filesystem, not to the device ( /dev/sdc in your commands).

Do I have to check if the disk sector sizes are the same and pass any parameters to ddrescue if they're not?.

Do I have to ensure the drives are not mounted before running ddrescue?.

If I had to choose, is it better to have the new drive in the SATA port and the failing drive in the enclosure or vice versa?.I read it's not a good idea to connect the hard drive to a USB enclosure? What alternative do I have though if I only have one SATA connection?.Where do I write the log file (map file) if the Ubuntu live USB does not have persistent storage and the other disks are unmounted? Can I also write that to the new target disk? How big is the log file typically?.run ddrescue with a first pass to quickly recover the easy sectors and then run a second passДdrescue -f -n /dev/sdb /dev/sdc rescue.logДdrescue -d -f -r3 /dev/sdb /dev/sdc rescue.log.connect the old failing drive via USB enclosure.connect the new target drive via SATA on my computer.boot via Ubuntu live USB and use ddrescue.I'm about to start a recovery with ddrescue and was wondering if I'm on the right path with these steps.

Ddrescue gui