How do I copy over a partition ignoring errors?

Question

I had a disk with a lot of surface errors that I used until a couple days ago when I got my new ssd. I want to know how I could completely copy over my home partition but ignore all errors while doing so, as it probably has a few hundred bad clusters in the beginning and it would literally take hours just clicking "ignore" on gparted. Please guys, I have like 85gb in there that would be an absolute pain to recreate or manually copy all files over and correct the permissions of.

Answer 1

A. To copy the files into a "flat" directory

If it is possible for the script to create at least a file list, but it should ignore the problems that might occur in copying them, it should work.

In case of duplicates, it will save the duplicates as duplicate_1_<filename>, duplicate_2_` etc.

I used:

try
    <copy_command>
except Exception
    pass

Which covers the widest possible range of errors.

The script:

#!/usr/bin/env python3

import shutil
import os

sourcedir = "/path/to/source"
dest_dir = "/path/to/destination"

for root, dirs, files in os.walk(sourcedir):
    for name in files:
        subject = root+"/"+name
        n = 1; name_orig = name
        while os.path.exists(dest_dir+"/"+name):
            name = "duplicate_"+str(n)+"_"+name_orig
            n = n+1
        try:
            newfile = dest_dir+"/"+name
            shutil.copy(subject, newfile)
        except Exception:
            pass

Copy it into an empty file, save it as giveit_ashot.py and set the sourcedir and destination.

Run it by:

python3 /path/to/giveit_ashot.py

B. If the directory structure is important

then use the script below, it first tries to (re-)create the directories (top- down), then copies the files into the structure as much as possible. Again: it must at least be possible to create a file / directory list.

#!/usr/bin/env python3

import shutil
import os

sourcedir = "/path/to/source"
dest_dir = "/path/to/destination"

dirdata = []
filedata = []

for root, dirs, files in os.walk(sourcedir):
    for dir in dirs:
        absolute = root+"/"+dir
        relative = absolute.replace(sourcedir, "")
        dirdata.append([absolute, dest_dir+relative, len(absolute.split("/"))])
    for file in files:
        abs_file = root+"/"+file
        rel_file = abs_file.replace(sourcedir, "") # source
        filedata.append((abs_file, dest_dir+rel_file)) # destination

dirdata.sort(key=lambda x: x[2])

for item in dirdata:
    try:
        if not os.path.exists(item[1]):
            os.mkdir(item[1])
    except Exception:
        pass

for item in filedata:
    try:
        shutil.copy(item[0], item[1])
    except Exception:
        pass

Answer 2

gparted suggest you're creating/formatting the partition. Not the one you have your home, I expect.

If the partition is already created, try to format with:

mkfs.ext4 -c  /dev/sdXX

Make sure to put the right /dev/sdXX.

If you're trying to copy from a bad partition to a good one, I don't know how cp would behave in the face of IO errors.

Answer 3

You have to take different measures for

1. fix bad blocks (some filesystems, like ext4 and ext3 allow this, info at man e2fsck)
2. copying ignoring errors (your initial question), e.g. with rsync -a --ignore-errors /path/to/mountpoint/of/broken/device/ /path/to/folder/on/working/device/

A long shot remark: You might want to create an image of the partition with dd before you overwrite it or throw the disk away (new recovery tools might come up in some time and get more data out of the disk than current and the tips (mine included) you get to restore the files might just be wrong), e.g. do sudo dd if=/dev/sdxY | pigz -p 8 | sudo tee /path/to/a/file/on/a/working/disk.img.gz for a compressed image.