Yes, ddrescue is a Linux tool, although someone at tinyapps.org had helpfully recompiled it from 
source for OS X and made it available.  I did look around for a Windows binary and couldn't find 
one, but that's not particularly surprising given that this kind of data retrieval/forensics work is 
almost always done in a Linux environment.

It's much more common for these things to be ported to OS X than to Windows, since the former 
shares a lot in common with Linux, while Windows is really its own thing.  Sometimes, somebody 
makes the effort to port something over to Windows, it's just not the norm.  Again, this isn't the 
kind of thing a home user would be expected to run on their desktop PC on a daily basis.

By the way, thanks Tom for the tip about dbPowerAmp.  I wasn't aware of a stand-alone ripper 
program that would do that kind of extraction.  Good to know.

- Aaron

On Wed, 7 Aug 2013 19:30:05 +0000, Don Cox <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>Unfortunately I have not been able to unarchive the ddrescue download so
>far. It might be a Linux-only program ? Linux folk like to make it as
>difficult as possible to use their software.
>
>I am using Win XP. Does anyone have a version that just works on XP,
>without all the obstacles ?  It would be small enough to email.
>
>Regards
>-- 
>Don Cox
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