SAFECOPY(1)															       SAFECOPY(1)

NAME

       SAFECOPY - A data recovery tool

SYNOPSIS

       SAFECOPY [OPTIONS] SOURCE TARGET

DESCRIPTION

       A data recovery tool.

       Safecopy  is  a	data recovery tool which tries to extract as much data as possible from a seekable, but problematic (i.e. damaged sectors)
       source - like floppy drives, harddisk partitions, CDs, ..., where other tools like dd would fail doe to I/O errors.

       Safecopy tries to get as much data from the source as possible without device dependent tricks. For example to get an ISO image from a copy
       protected or otherwise damaged CD-ROM, cdrdao and bin2iso would possibly do a better and faster job.

       Safecopy comes with preset options (named stages) to ease its use.  These presets can be overridden by individual options.

OPTIONS

       Usage: safecopy [options] <source> <target>

       -b <size>
	      Blocksize, also used for skipping offset when searching for the end of a bad area. Set this to physical sectorsize of your media.
	      Default: 1*
	      If <size> is an integer, then the unit is in bytes.
	      If <size> is followed by the percentage sign, it express a percentage of the whole file/device size.
	      If <size> is followed by a star sign, it means a number of times the block size reported by the operating system.

       -f <size>
	      Size  when  skipping over badblocks.  Higher values put less strain on dammaged hardware, but on the other hand, you might miss good
	      areas in between two bad ones.
	      Default value is 16*.
	      If <size> is an integer, then the unit is in bytes.
	      If <size> is followed by the percentage sign, it express a percentage of the whole file/device size.
	      If <size> is followed by a star sign, it means a number of times the block size. See option -b.

       -r <size>
	      Resolution when searching for the exact beginning or end of a bad area Bigger values increase performace at potential cost of  valid
	      data close to damaged areas.
	      Default: 1*
	      If <size> is an integer, then the unit is in bytes.
	      If <size> is followed by the percentage sign, it express a percentage of the whole file/device size.
	      If <size> is followed by a star sign, it means a number of times the block size. See option -b.

       -R <number>
	      Number  of read attempts on the first bad block of a damaged area with minimum resolution. More retries can sometimes recover a weak
	      sector, but at the cost of additional strain.
	      Default: 3

       -Z <number>
	      On each error, force seek the read head from start to end of the source device as often as  specified.   That  takes  times,  create
	      additional strain and might not be supported by all devices or drivers.
	      Default: 1

       -L <mode>
	      Use low level device calls as specified by the mode number.
	      Where mode number can be:
	      0: Do not use low level device calls.
	      1: Attempt low level device calls for error recovery only.
	      2: Always use low level device calls if available.
	      Default: 1

       --sync
	      Use  synchronized read calls (disable driver buffering).	Safecopy will use O_DIRECT if supported by the operating system and O_SYNC
	      otherwise.
	      Default: Asynchronous read buffering.

       -s <blocks>
	      Start position where to start reading. Will correspond to position 0 in the destination file.
	      Default: block 0

       -l <blocks>
	      Length of data to be read.
	      Default: size of input file.

       -I <badblockfile>
	      Incremental mode. Assume the target file already exists and has holes specified in the badblockfile.
	      It will attempt to retrieve more data from the listed blocks or from beyond the file size of the target file only.
	      WARNING: Without this option, the destination file will be emptied prior to writing.
	      Use -I /dev/null if you want to continue a previous run of safecopy without a badblock list file.
	      Default: None

       -i <bytes>
	      Blocksize to interpret the badblockfile given with -I.
	      Default: Blocksize as specified by -b.

       -X <badblockfile>
	      Exclusion mode. If used together with -I, excluded blocks override included ones. Safecopy will not read	or  write  any	data  from
	      areas covered by excluded blocks.
	      Default: None

       -x <bytes>
	      Blocksize to interpret the badblockfile given with -X.
	      Default: blocksize as specified by -b

       -o <badblockfile>
	      Write a badblocks/e2fsck compatible bad block file.
	      Default: None

       -S <seekscript>
	      Use an external script foir seeking in input file. This might be useful for tape devices or similar.
	      Seekscript  must	be an executable that takes the number of blocks to be skipped as argv1 (1-64) the blocksize in bytes as argv2 and
	      the current position as argv3.
	      Return values needs to be the number of blocks successfully skipped, or 0 to indicate seek failure.  The	external  seekscript  will
	      only be used if lseek() fails and we need to skip over data.
	      Default: None

       -M <string>
	      Mark unrecovered data with this string instead of skipping it. This helps in later on rescued file system images.
	      The default behavior is to zero the unreadable data on creation of the output files, and leaving the data as it is on any later run.
	      WARNING:	when  used  in combination with incremental mode (-I), this may overwrite data in any block specified in the badblockfile.
	      Blocks not in the badblockfile, or covered by those specified in the -X file are safe from being overwritten.
	      Default: None

       --debug <level>
	      Enable debug output. Level is a bit field, add values together for more informations as follow:
	      1 program flow
	      2 IO control
	      4 badblock marking
	      8 seeking
	      16 incremental mode
	      32 exclude mode
	      Use 255 for all debug output.
	      Default: 0

       -T <timingfile>
	      Write sector read timing information into this file for later analysis.
	      Default: None

       -h | --help
	      Show a maybe more detailed help.

PRESETS OPTIONS

       --stage1
	      Preset to rescue most of the data fast, using no retries and avoiding bad areas.
	      Presets: -f 10% -r 10% -R 1 -Z 0 -L 2 -M BaDbloCk -o stage1.badblocks

       --stage2
	      Preset to rescue more data, using no retries but searching for exact ends of bad areas.
	      Presets: -f 128* -r 1* -R 1 -Z 0 -L 2 -I stage1.badblocks -o stage2.badblocks

       --stage3
	      Preset to rescue everything that can be rescued using maximum retries, head realignment tricks and low level access.
	      Presets: -f 1* -r 1* -R 4 -Z 1 -L 2 -I stage2.badblocks -o stage3.badblocks

DESCRIPTION OF OUTPUT

       . :    Between 1 and 1024 blocks successfully read.

       _ :    Read was incomplete. (possibly end of file) blocksize is reduced to read the rest.

       > :    Read failed, reducing blocksize to read partial data.

       [xx](+yy) :
	      current block and number of blocks (or bytes) continuously read successfully up to this point.

       X :    Read failed on block with minimum blocksize and is skipped. Unrecoverable error, destination file is padded with zeros. Data is  now
	      skipped until end of the unreadable area is reached.

       < :    Successfull read- test after the end of a bad area causes backtracking to search for the first readable data.

       [xx](+yy) :
	      Current block and number of blocks (or bytes) of recent continuous unreadable data.

AUTHOR

       safecopy was written by Corvus Corax (corvuscorax@cybertrench.com)

       This  manual  page was originally written by Juan Angulo Moreno <juan@apuntale.com> for the Debian project (but may be used by others).	It
       was filled out by Christophe Monniez <christophe.monniez@fccu.be> .

								    August 2009 						       SAFECOPY(1)