Unable to restore clonezilla backup

[blynch]

I'm trying to restore a Clonezilla-created backup of a partition to recover some files. Below is what I tried (in Ubuntu linux); the  restore operation failed. Is there anything else worth trying? Thanks!

## the files
b@b-laptop:/$ ls -lh /media/external/Cpartn-img
total 12G
-rwxrwxrwx 1 b b    5 2011-01-18 15:05 parts
-rwxrwxrwx 2 b b 2.0G 2011-01-18 14:26 sda2.ntfs-img.aa
...
-rwxrwxrwx 2 b b 1.7G 2011-01-18 15:05 sda2.ntfs-img.af
-rwxrwxrwx 1 b b   36 2011-01-18 14:19 sda-chs.sf
-rwxrwxrwx 1 b b  512 2011-01-18 14:19 sda-mbr
-rwxrwxrwx 2 b b  454 2011-01-18 14:19 sda-pt.parted
-rwxrwxrwx 1 b b  259 2011-01-18 14:19 sda-pt.sf
b@b-laptop:/$
## checking the compression type
b@b-laptop:/$ file /media/320gb_external/Cpartn-img/sda2.ntfs-img.aa
/media/320gb_external/Cpartn-img/sda2.ntfs-img.aa: gzip compressed data, from Unix, last modified: Tue Jan 18 14:19:24 2011, max speed
b@b-laptop:/$ file /media/320gb_external/Cpartn-img/sda2.ntfs-img.ab
/media/320gb_external/Cpartn-img/sda2.ntfs-img.ab: data
## attempting to restore to an image
b@b-laptop:/media$ cat /media/320gb_external/Cpartn-img/sda2.ntfs-img.* | gzip -d -c | sudo ntfsclone --restore-image -o /media/320gb_external/Csda2.img -
ntfsclone v2.0.0 (libntfs 10:0:0)
Ntfsclone image version: 10.0
Cluster size           : 4096 bytes
Image volume size      : 21476204544 bytes (21477 MB)
Image device size      : 21476206080 bytes
Space in use           : 18752 MB (87.3%)   
Offset to image data   : 56 (0x38) bytes
Restoring NTFS from image ...
cat: /media/320gb_external/Cpartn-img/sda2.ntfs-img.ab: Input/output error
cat: /media/320gb_external/Cpartn-img/sda2.ntfs-img.ac: Input/output error
cat: /media/320gb_external/Cpartn-img/sda2.ntfs-img.ad: Input/output error
cat: /media/320gb_external/Cpartn-img/sda2.ntfs-img.ae: Input/output error
cat: /media/320gb_external/Cpartn-img/sda2.ntfs-img.af: Input/output error
gzip: stdin: unexpected end of file

[blynch]

Is there really nothing worth trying…?

[Robert Weir]

Hi blynch
  I found this which may help.  The key is to mount the file as a loop device so that the filesystem block functions will work.

               --->
  Yes, but it's not straightforward. Here you are:

    * Method 1: Use Clonezilla live to restore the image to a virtual machine (e.g. VMWare workstation or Virtual Box). Then mount the restored partition to read the contents.
    * Method 2:
         1. Prepare a large disk in Linux
         2. Say if your image is /home/partimag/YOURIMAGE/, if the image is like /home/partimag/YOURIMAGE/*-ptcl-img.* (e.g. /home/partimag/YOURIMAGE/sda1.ext4-ptcl-img.gz.aa), follow this to restore the image.
            If the the image is like /home/partimag/YOURIMAGE/sda1.ntfs-img.aa, sda1.ntfs-img.ab…, run
            "file /home/partimag/YOURIMAGE/sda1.ntfs-img.aa"
            to see it's gzip, bzip or lzop image. Say it's gzip, then you can run
            cat /home/partimag/YOURIMAGE/sda1.ntfs-img.* | gzip -d -c | ntfsclone -restore-image -o sda1.img -
            Then you will have a "sda1.img" which you can mount it by
            mount -o loop -t ntfs sda1.img /mnt
            Then all the files are in /mnt/
            You can do the similar thing for the ext3, ext4 or reiserfs file system.
    * Method 3: Use the tool partclone-utils to mount the image directly. (//NOTE// This program is not maintained by Clonezilla team. However, it will be included in the future release of partclone when the new release, e.g. 0.2 is released.).
<---
Above found at URL http://drbl.sourceforge.net/faq/fine-print.php?path=./2_System/43_read_ntfsimg_content.faq#43_read_ntfsimg_content.faq 

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[Robert Weir]

Hi blynch
  Sorry I did not read your code thoroughly enough.  The only thing I might suggest is to check the external connections as otherwise all coding seems correct.
  Cheers…
Robert

[Steven Shiau]

"cat: /media/320gb_external/Cpartn-img/sda2.ntfs-img.ab: Input/output error" -> Maybe there is hardware issue on your hard disk?

Steven.