So in the present endeavour I learnt somewhat about hdparm and ddrescue, particularly, that the
man hdparm and info ddrescue are huge files and need time to comprehend.
What remains is to learn, in which file format does the ddrescue store the disk data, and which packages could be used to read and write that data into a DVD-RW! Pyikko says that Google should help! Very well, I will search Google. Thank you, Pyikko, Debiman and HOAS! But what I needed was knowing your personal experiences, personal angles, pointers to where exactly to look into, ...
I can use the metaphor of a medieval, impregnable castle. But having been designed by men, it must have some points of weakness, or some special places from where one could stealthily enter. I was likewise expecting you to provide me with the unique angles with the help of which I could grasp the Big Picture of recovering data in the affected partitions.
I acknowledge that I would need time to read the info ddrescue exhaustively to recover the data contained therein.
But there is one thing that I learnt: Never to partition a pendrive for optimisation!
This present exercise helped me learn a very pertinent issue: Why the system fails.
I found that the internet is virtually a limitless repository of information. So much that it causes information overload. Now regarding the present exercise, I would have liked to get professional help. I have nothing against paying the professionals for the services they provide. We are not supposed to know everything, so we turn to the specialists, who are in position to help us. Ideally, such a world would be full of specialists, and if we encounter problems we can't solve, we approach the specialists and they solve our problems, and life becomes very smoothly operable.
But looking at the grocers, the hawkers and the like, we find by interactions and experiences that people can't be trusted. To trust people we have to cultivate them: be with them, study their interactions with other people, their value systems, et al. That is a huge investment of time and energy. So, as a matter of safety we lose trust and by limiting how the immoral opportunists could harm us, we also deny the moral opportunists from helping us!
Now, in such a scenario, life becomes overbearing! Nothing seems to work. and people aren't happy anywhere, except when they believe in God and miracle! Morality without God appears impossible, whereas it shouldn't have been.
If we look at the Happy Planet Index, we find that no country that has advanced science and technology has its people happy! The happy people are in the poor, ill-educated, technologically backward countries. Which in turn reinforces the adage: Ignorance Is Bliss.
But I am sure that morality could very well exist without God. There was no reason for one to squeeze out a little more from the other, in the cases of business transactions. But at this very point people fail. Some give a little more than necessary, some take a little more than necessary. This doesn't seem enormous!
But considering the sheer number of transactions, those tiny little displeasures of losing tiny little extra and the elation of squeezing out extra, add up to make a Tsunami, and ruin civilisations in the end.
When I want to learn, people don't help me beyond a certain point, but point at the internet resources. Indirectly, they appear to say to me, that for me to know the real areas I need to pay them. Man, I am ready to pay you! But who decides that the transaction and the cost is precise and fair?
Perhaps this is why, despite its obvious advantages, FOSS fails, while secrecy, proprietary software, etc., continue to prevail. And generally, Good fails, while Immoral Opportunism continues to be successful.
Freedom is impossible to conceive.
Books that help:
Dale Carnegie's How To Win Friends And Influence People and Emilie Post's Etiquette In Society, In Business, In Politics, And At Home