[Bug-ddrescue] Extension: copy files from fs first

[serialhex]

Hi there, I work at a small computer shop and we get dead-ish drives quite
often.  A lot of the time when recovering data the 'normal' tools get
stuck or die.  We've used acronis & ghost & a few others.  The nice thing
about these tools is that they only copy the fs & the files on it.  This
dosnt help if the fs is so fscked that a fsck can't fix it.  I like
ddrescue b/c it dosnt matter if the fs works or not.  Although, rescuing
the customers 2GB worth of pictures on a failing 500GB drive is kind of
ridiculous with ddrescue - i'm only using 0.4% of what i'm rescuing.

What would be better - IMHO - is the option to copy over the fs first,
and/or cache it to memory, and then copy files from there.  I know this
wouldn't be an easy project, and I'm interested enough in this to work on
it myself, I'm just not sure where to begin.  I know that the Linux source
has all the code to read & write a whole bunch of fs's, i'm just not sure
how to leverage it properly.  There are probably other problems too that
I'm not thinking about, but will come out in the creation process.

I'm willing to put some time in & work on this but I'm mostly unsure where
to begin.  I know how to program in C++ - though I'm not very good (yet). 
If you have any tips / suggestions / pointers / warnings I would be glad
to hear them.

Justin