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    • Showing only topics with the tag "data recovery". Back to normal view

    1. [SOLVED] Recovering data in a very old, possibly corrupted tar archive?

      ~comp Text 259 words
      Hi all, There is a tar.gz whose contents I would like to access. The file itself is quite old, last being updated ~20 years ago if I had to guess (I am not sure if this is relevant). The file...

      Hi all,

      There is a tar.gz whose contents I would like to access. The file itself is quite old, last being updated ~20 years ago if I had to guess (I am not sure if this is relevant). The file contains legacy scientific code that I would like for archival purposes and can be found via the "code site" link here. However:

      • When I download the file and run tar -xvzf radpack.tar.gz I get an error: tar: Error opening archive: Unrecognized archive format.
      • Likewise, if I try to gunzip it I get gunzip: radpack.tar.gz: not in gzip format.
      • Running file radpack.tar.gz only yields radpack.tar.gx: data, indicating file cannot find anything out about it.
      • head radpack.tar.gz outputs a string of unintelligible unicode.

      These are the different solutions I have come across after searching this problem, and to me is good evidence that the file has been corrupted in some way and that may very well be the case. However, for archival and historical purposes it would be great if I could access the contents, so I am compelled to search out other solutions. Are there other options I can try here? Is there some way to confirm that the file is in fact corrupted beyond recovery? Any help on this point would be greatly appreciated. I posted this on stack exchange as well but figured maybe the smart folks here might know.

      EDIT:

      Just to be clear this has been solved — a functioning copy of the archive was found.

      17 votes

    2. Hard drive dying, trying to save a VM

      ~comp Ask (advice)
      I have a large VirtualBox VM on an external HDD. The HDD fails the S.M.A.R.T. test. The VM still works fine, but any regular attempt to copy the VM files over to a healthy drive fails ... there is...

      I have a large VirtualBox VM on an external HDD. The HDD fails the S.M.A.R.T. test. The VM still works fine, but any regular attempt to copy the VM files over to a healthy drive fails ... there is clearly already something corrupt in the VM's virtual HDD, although it is not (apparently? yet?) affecting the functionality of the actual VM.

      Any suggestions on how to save the VM? Linux Mint Guest OS, Pop_OS (Ubuntu) Host. The VM is nearly 800 GB. Both regular copy and rsync fail.

      Thanks,
      Eric

      PS: (and perhaps I should have led with this, but...) is it okay to ask these kinds of specific, technical, "help me with my tech-stuff" questions here on Tildes?

      Update to the update ... moved update info into a comment ... will keep my progress updated in that primary comment.

      Danke, y gracias to all

      14 votes