Chapter 1. What is DDRescue-GUI?

Abstract

DDRescue-GUI is an open source GUI front-end for GNU ddrescue. It is designed to make ddrescue easier to use, as it is a command-line application. DDRescue-GUI brings ddrescue to a wider audience than was previously possible because "normal" users can use it. This chapter provides basic information about ddrescue and DDRescue-GUI. I'm going to start at the start, to make sure everything is very clear. If you already know about ddrescue and DDRescue-GUI, you can probably skip to the next chapter.

Table of Contents

What is GNU ddrescue?
What is DDRescue-GUI?
Why should I use DDRescue-GUI?
System Requirements
Where can I download DDRescue-GUI?

What is GNU ddrescue?

Figure 1.1. GNU ddrescue in action

GNU ddrescue in action

GNU ddrescue is a data recovery program, written by Antonio Diaz Diaz. It's amazingly powerful, and has a lot of features other tools don't have, such as the ability to use a recovery mapfile (previously called a log file), which means that if your system crashes during a recovery, you can start again where you left off.

Other features include multiple passes over drives to try and get the easy-to-read data first, direct disk access (complicated so I will explain it later), and disk-to-disk recovery. It was originally written for Linux, ddrescue can actually run just fine on macOS and even Windows, which makes it all the more impressive. Note that DDRescue-GUI doesn't currently run on Windows, but may do so in a later release.

That's where the difficulty comes in, though. Firstly, ddrescue is a command-line tool, which means only people who are used to using the text-only command-line are going to be able to use it. It's possible to figure it out anyway, but if you're not confident that you're doing it right you could cause loss of data. Despite this, ddrescue is probably still the best data recovery tool out there.

The second problem is that while ddrescue will run on macOS and Windows, you have to compile it, which is often slow, difficult, and confusing, especially if you aren't used to doing this sort of thing. DDRescue-GUI provides a graphical interface for ddrescue, and solves some of these other problems as well.

Nevertheless, remember that GNU ddrescue is an excellent tool. For more information about ddrescue, see https://www.gnu.org/software/ddrescue/.