[[!meta title="Recovering data from the Persistent Storage when it has file system errors"]]

<p>If instead, your Tails USB stick doesn't start, refer to our instructions on
[[recovering data from the Persistent Storage when Tails doesn't
start|recover]].</p>

[[!img repair.png link="no" class="screenshot" alt="File System Errors dialog in Welcome Screen"]]

Tails can try to fix these errors, but this might erase some of your data and take a long time.

That is why, if you cannot restore from a recent [[backup]], we recommend that you create a *partition image* of your Persistent Storage *before* attempting to repair the file system of your Persistent Storage from the Welcome Screen.

Most of the time, repairing the file system will work fine and will be enough to fix your Persistent Storage.

In the rare cases when repairing the file system will not work, you might be able to recover some or most of your data from this partition image using advanced forensics tools. This recovery process is very technical and you might need help from someone experienced with data recovery.

<h1 id="image">Creating a partition image of your Persistent Storage</h1>

A partition image is a copy of your entire Persistent Storage in a single file that you can save to an external hard disk from Tails.

To save the partition image outside of Tails, you need an external hard disk with as much free space as the size of your Persistent Storage, usually 8&nbsp;GB less than your Tails USB stick. You can also use another USB stick of the same size as your Tails USB stick, but writing to a USB stick is usually much slower than writing to a hard disk.

<div class="caution">

<p>The partition image contains a <i>decrypted</i> version of your
Persistent Storage.</p>

<p>We recommend that you save the partition image to an [[encrypted hard
disk|encryption_and_privacy/encrypted_volumes]].</p>

We are presenting here 2 different techniques to create a partition image of your Persistent Storage.

[[Create a partition image using the *Disks* utility|fsck#disks]]

Try this technique first if the hardware of your USB stick is not failing.

[[Create a partition image using `ddrescue` on the command line|fsck#ddrescue]]

Try this technique first if the hardware of your USB stick is failing.

Using `ddrescue` is more difficult but is better than the *Disks* utility to
recover data if the hardware of your USB stick is failing.

<h2 id="disks">Creating a partition image using the <i>Disks</i> utility</h2>