Hardware

Could I please get recommendations on how to image a hd. What software is best and what methods are best? After a lot of googling these programs are the most talked about that I saw. Is one better than other? Or is one better for certain file systems? I plan on doing this to a ntfs hd.

partimage, testdisk, Ultimate Boot CD, DeviceImage

What is "best" depends entirely on what you're trying to do. I have a suspicion you need data-recovery as much as a disk image... most any basic linux livecd can make a disk image with dd, but if the disk's in trouble the image will reflect any errors in it too. On the other hand, "smarter" programs which understand the filesystem being copied and don't bother copying empty space may break down completely when they try to digest corrupted data.

I know lots of special-purpose solutions, I tend not to look for or use commercial ones.

Sometimes I use a udpcast boot-CD to image disks over a network. It's simple, effective, and menu-driven. You can download their basic ISO image, or build your own with all the frills with their web-based ISO generator. You can also boot it over PXE.

I also use Gentoo livecd's for more complex problems, or dying disks. I'm used to the Linux environment, so I'm quite happy with booting a Linux livecd and using the dd, dd_rescue(similar to dd, but handles block errors better), udp-sender/udp-receiver and/or ntfsclone applications in concert to do what I want.

Yes you are correct I am trying to recover data off of a damaged ntfs system. I know the data is still there thx to testdisk. NTFS has a lovely limitation that only lets you recover your first 10 folders. I have many more folders than that.

I'm comfortable using a Linux Live cd. I have no problem with that. Is dd_rescue better than ntfsclone?

for a damaged disk? Absolutely. ntfsclone is not meant to deal with damaged disks, and will refuse to do so even if the partition was just shutdown uncleanly, let alone damaged. You can force it to do so with --rescue and --force, but I'd only do so if there's nothing you can recover from the dd-ed image.

Be sure to use dd with conv=noerror,sync in case you get a read error in the middle, so the partition image doesn't shrink and zero-fills where necessary instead.

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You might also want to look into magicrescue, which can recover at least lots of partial files from a damaged disk/partition by scanning for file signiatures.

I would suggest you windows data recovery software by Stellar, the software can create a clone or image of hard drive. You can create an image of the hard drive or any selected region on the hard drive.