On 19/08/16 00:08, Rob Owens wrote:

> I don't know the answer to your read-only question. But having done
> some data recovery in the past, I've found that attaching the drive via
> USB and sitting the drive in the freezer during recovery can help in
> situations like this. Also, besides ddrescue you can also take a look
> at photorec (part of the testdisk package).
>

+2 for the freezer. I've used a long USB and power lead, put the drive
in a ziplock bag with some silica gel, pulled as much air as possible
out and sealed it up with duct tape. Done this on about 3 drives over
the years and had great results. Only on drives where they exhibited
thermal issues though.

I've never done a filesystem recovery on a dying drive for fear of
further damage. I _always_ image using ddrescue and deal with the
filesystem issues on the clone.