I made an image file with ddresuce and I'm trying to recover a BUNCH of .m4a musics files from it.

Is there any Windows freeware or Linux tools for this ?

You can mount a ddrescue image and see files - see this page: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DataRecovery

Good luck!

The following mentions P2 eXplorer for mounting the image in Windows.
http://www.myfixlog.com/fix.php?fid=21|

P2 eXplorer Free v3.1: http://www.paraben.com/p2-explorer.html
Don't know if the paid version -yikes! $200- is required, or if the free version will suffice.

Well here's the thing... I used Windows Easy Transfer in Vista to back up the files on this drive (that I'm trying to recover files on) and then I reinstalled the OS. The migration file is corrupted so Easy Transfer will not migrate the files I need... and I was only able to extract very few .m4a and jpeg files from it with MigRecover. Most of the files that MigRecover extracted are corrupted.

However, these mounting tools, do they mount only the last file system that was installed or do they dig up all other files on the drive as well ? For instance, I was able to mount the ddrescue image file with FuriousISOmount in Linux, but only the most current file system is shown/mounted and nothing else. I WAS able to extract some of the jpeg files I needed from the image using Foremost in Linux, but Foremost doesn't extract .m4a files which is what I need at this point. I imagine at least SOME of the .m4a files I need are still somewhere on the drive even though an OS has been installed over the original installation, but I need a program that will extact .M4A files type. I don't think Scalpel supports that file type and I know Foremost does not.

I know the hard drive that I'm trying to extract these files from is healthly with no bad sectors because I scanned it with MHDD. So I know the migration file is not corrupted because of a bad drive; the Easy Transfer tool in Windows is just buggy it seems.

Little confused. I'm not sure what you mean.
Did you run the Windows Transfer Wizard before the reinstall, and then created the ddrescue image after reinstalling?
At this point, if the only original backup you have is corrupt, I would run testdisk (or whatever you prefer) from a bootable disc and recover as much data as possible.
I might even get nuts and use clonezilla to make a bit for bit clone to another drive and perform the recovery on it.
Depends on how critical the data is.

Regarding your other thread about the corrupt Windows Easy Transfer file,
http://www.podnutz.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=7097,
you used MigRecover, but had corrupt files after the extraction.
Did you try both versions of MigRecover? There's USMT3, and USMT4. Using the wrong one will yield 'corrupt' files.
Did you run in the same as original environment? i.e if you created the .mig in XP x86 then run MigRecover in XP x86.
If it was created in Vista x64, the run it in Vista x64. Eh, worth a shot.

OP, take a look at this tool as well: MIG Recovery and Viewer Utility.
The most recent release worked well in my testing. Must be run in Vista/7. No XP version available.




http://www.migee.com/2011/01/17/mig-recover-and-viewer-utility-alpha/

crap


I downloaded the GUI tool MigRecover 3/4, but using 3 and 4 both yield corrupt files. First I clicked "File" and then "Open", browsed to the .MIG file and it opened a bunch of files (most are corrupted)...the log file said I should use the "3" version instead so I used the 3 extractor and got the same results.

I've got TestDisk here at home. I thought that tool only mounted lost partitions. No ? If the original partition has been written over with a new file system I suspect it won't do me much good.

From what it reads, MagicRescue may work if it will let me configure it for .m4a type, as it says the supported file types can be "extended", but I'll have to wait and see because I can't stand trying to get anything done from this dial-up connection I've been using...We're moving soon and I plan on having a good high speed connection!

thanks

Oh man. When it rains it poors.


That's a bummer. Thought we might have had something there.


Last time I used it I'm pretty sure I recovered data from a broken XP install that had been accidentally formatted.
I don't want to steer you wrong here, so would appreciate any comments from others.
Photorec also should get it done, and perhaps that's where you should start.
The important point to make here is these are Linux based tools run from a live disc so as to preserve the data on the HDD, as opposed to booting the hard drive and using Windows based tools.

BTW, should the title of you thread actually read: 'need to extract .m4a music files from .mig file'?