[gentoo-user] data recovery advice needed

[Jack <ostroffjh@users.sourceforge.net>]

Some months ago, I borked a laptop HDD by trying to move a partition in  
a way that left both the old and new partitions invalid.  (For my  
sanity, I've forced the details out of my memory, but the old and new  
locations overlapped, and I think the move might have been  
interrupted.  My own fault, I know.)  In addition, the drive started  
having read errors, so it was time to replace it anyway.

So, I removed that HDD for safekeeping (completely reinstalled the  
laptop on a new drive) and now I'm trying to recover data from an  
intact partition on the old drive, the problem being that the drive is  
giving some read errors, so I want to minimize access, lest it die  
completely.  I have the drive attached with a SATA to USB adaptor, and  
mounted the partition.  I made the mistake of trying to copy one  
directory (and everything below it) with "cp -r /path/to/mounted/folder  
/path/to/new/location".  As far as I can tell, all the files got copied  
(slowly) but all the new files have the timestamp of when they were  
created.  I know I should have done a "cp -ar" to preserve timestamps.   
Is there any way to fix this other than completely repeating the copy?   
Will some version of rsync do what I want?

Thanks for any suggestions, other than to think more carefully before  
typing.


Jack