[youngian]

Oh! I forgot to mention:

1.5 If the hard drive is so badly failed that you cannot even get ddrescue running, try again tomorrow. And the next day. And the next. I cannot explain why a hard drive would come back to life, but I have seen it happen a number of times. I have seen a hard drive that was clicking and irrecoverable for two solid weeks suddenly show up just fine one day in the device list. It mounted and everything, and we promptly pulled all the data off. I'm not much of an optimist, but when it comes to failed hard drives, I've seen miracles occur.