I/O errors when trying to copy data off a drive

Question

I'm trying to copy data off of an old SATA drive that ran Ubuntu but it erroring out saying Input/Output Error.

What would cause that error and how can I fix it?

Answer 1

I/O error means that the Hard Drive can't read a certain location. It can be caused by a bad sector.

You can use ddrescue.

ddrescue is a data recovery tool. It copies data from one file or block device (hard disc, cdrom, etc) to another, trying hard to rescue data in case of read errors.¹

You can download the latest release Here, or through the Ubuntu Software Center

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