WHDD is a HDD diagnostic and data recovery tool for Linux.

It is capable of testing a hard drive with reading and writing, providing
intuitive visualization of the process. Visualization or these tests is very
similar to MHDD.

Amongst others, there is a function for copying the device. The copying procedure
algorithms are optimized for least harm to already-defective source device.
The meaning of this becomes clear in a demo.

WHDD may work with your hard drives on low level, sending ATA commands to device,
the benefits are:

* no system freeze while accessing damaged device (device is soft-reset on timeout);
* better timing precision.