[P]artial [F]ile [R]ecovery in case of badSector, HDD Error

Published Date: 2022/12/04 by: DaVieS

Our new Software released under Open Source license.

PFR is a cross-platform easy-to-use powerfull tool to recover broken files that caused HDD or Filesystem errors. Seemed very usefull recovering corrupted innoDB databases as well. 

Download here: https://github.com/DaVieS007/Partial-File-Recovery

Overview

Software is intended to recover files from a bad drive, written in pure C, by doing the following:

• Unlike other similar softwares, default action is Fast Forward which is a 64K direct-copy and only fallback to Block Mining aka byte-to-byte copy when badblock found and for a short period as recovery necessary, this mechanism give insane recovery speed on huge files.
• In recovery mode, there is an option to define max retry, which intended to probe [x] times the same sector to recover badblock, there is a little chance to succeed anyway. Also if the block could not be recovered the software will fill a specified character instead (default: 0x00) and continues read, this mechanism allows to partially recover the file.

What can be recover partially

• innoDB tables (*.ibd) recovery possible on small amount of data loss, combinated with innodb_recovery_mode = 6 there are a great chance to able to dump the database with only a few rows missing.
• Video Files, Mp3 Files, Pictures, Text Files, Anything.

What can NOT be recover

• Deleted files, this software intended to use on files that affected by filesystem error or HDD error.

The story behind it

• First of all: I never thought that this could happen on modern hardware and software.
• A VPS-Host machine with ZFS storage and a Virtual Machine with Centos 7 running top of ext4 filesystem. The ext4 filesystem suddenly collapsed for no reason, (it was extended months before).
• mySQL database gone with some bigger files under heavy load.
• I successfully developed this software that allowed us to recover all the files within the entire system without a data loss, due only 15x 16K pages lost where was not userdata.
• Partial recovery was allowed us to start mySQL server, however middle of dump creation, hang up and crashed down lately, the setting: ˛innodb_recovery_mode did the trick, dump & restore without any problem after all.
• Yet Tested on old HDD with corrupted mp3, and mp4. Successfully recovered the mp3 with an audible glitch middle of the song, and also a video file with 3-4 second of frameskip at the begining.

[25381.474111] blk_update_request: I/O error, dev vda, sector 106469896
[25381.998891] blk_update_request: I/O error, dev vda, sector 106469896
[25382.529098] blk_update_request: I/O error, dev vda, sector 106469896
[25383.134682] blk_update_request: I/O error, dev vda, sector 106469896
[25383.546360] blk_update_request: I/O error, dev vda, sector 106469896
[25383.756537] blk_update_request: I/O error, dev vda, sector 106469896

Compilation

• gcc -o pfr pfr.c or clang -o pfr pfr.c

Usage

[P]artial [F]ile [R]ecovery Version: 1.0r
Author: Viktor Hlavaji aka DaVieS, davies@npulse.net | Licensed under: GNU/GPLv3
Usage: ./pfr [source_file] [dest_file] [try = 1] [fill = 00]
 - source_file: The file that needs recover
 - dest_file: Output file will generated by this software
 - try: (Optional) number of attempts to read a badSector
 - fill: (Optional) unrecovered bytes will replaced by hexCode 0x[XX]
Software Output:
Action | Current Block: 315385359, Round Left: 1, lost: 26127, recovered: 12, acquired: 315359232, Progress: 60.154984
 |       |                         |              |            |              |                    |-> Progress
 |       |                         |              |            |              |-> Bytes read successfully
 |       |                         |              |            |-> Bytes magically recovered
 |       |                         |              |-> Unrecovered Bytes that filled with a specified character
 |       |                         |-> Retry Count Left
 |       |-> Show current position
 |-> [Fast Forward] when continous data read available, or [Block Mining] when recovery in action
Example: ./pfr ./broken_file.mp3 ./broken_file_fix.mp3
Example: ./pfr /home/music/broken_file.mp3 /tmp/broken_file_fix.mp3 2 00

Sample Output

[root@vhost damaged]# ./pfr ib_logfile1 ib_logfile1.fix
[P]artial [F]ile [R]ecovery Version: 1.0r
Author: Viktor Hlavaji aka DaVieS, davies@npulse.net | Licensed under: GNU/GPLv3
Source File Opened Successfully: ib_logfile1
Destination File Opened Successfully: ib_logfile1.fix
Total Bytes to recover: 524288000
badBlock Try Count: 1
badBlock fill char: 0x00
Fast Forward | Current Block: 0, Round Left: 1, lost: 0, recovered: 0, acquired: 0, Progress: 0.000000
Fast Forward | Current Block: 271253504, Round Left: 1, lost: 0, recovered: 0, acquired: 271253504, Progress: 51.737499
Block Mining | Current Block: 313786368, Round Left: 0, lost: 0, recovered: 0, acquired: 313786368, Progress: 59.850002
Block Mining | Current Block: 313819234, Round Left: 0, lost: 98, recovered: 0, acquired: 313819136, Progress: 59.856270
Block Mining | Current Block: 313819309, Round Left: 0, lost: 173, recovered: 0, acquired: 313819136, Progress: 59.856285
Block Mining | Current Block: 313819445, Round Left: 0, lost: 309, recovered: 0, acquired: 313819136, Progress: 59.856308
Block Mining | Current Block: 313819447, Round Left: 0, lost: 311, recovered: 0, acquired: 313819136, Progress: 59.856312
Block Mining | Current Block: 313819455, Round Left: 0, lost: 319, recovered: 0, acquired: 313819136, Progress: 59.856312
Block Mining | Current Block: 313819473, Round Left: 0, lost: 337, recovered: 0, acquired: 313819136, Progress: 59.856316
Block Mining | Current Block: 315390216, Round Left: 0, lost: 30984, recovered: 0, acquired: 315359232, Progress: 60.155910
Block Mining | Current Block: 315391149, Round Left: 0, lost: 31917, recovered: 0, acquired: 315359232, Progress: 60.156090
Block Mining | Current Block: 315439742, Round Left: 0, lost: 32768, recovered: 0, acquired: 315406974, Progress: 60.165356
Finished | Current Block: 524288000, Round Left: 0, lost: 32768, recovered: 0, acquired: 524255232, Progress: 100