Hello, I'm trying to better understand the options for ddrescue. I've read the ddrescue.info file, but I'm still confused by some of them.
1. When to stop the ddrescue process? I currently have ddrescue running as follows: ddrescue --max-retries=3 --verbose --truncate --no-split /damaged_drive /good_drive/image_file.img logfile Are these good options to use? It's been running for about a day. The damaged drive is 40GB and 16GB have been rescued so far. The 'current rate' is very slow now, rarely climbing above 1kB/s. I'm not sure how full the drive was, but I'd like to get started on repairing the rescued image. 2. --truncate The .info file says this will "truncate the output file". Let's say I have a 10GB damaged hard drive and only 5GB are used. What effect will --truncate have on the resulting output image file? Will it be 10GB, 5GB, or something else? What is being truncated? Is this a good option to invoke to get an image of the non-damaged data? 3. --max-retries=N ddrescue.info indicates this will cause ddrescue to "exit after given number of retries". What is being "retried"? Reading a bad sector or the entire ddrescue process? Does ddrescue exit on its own if this option is not set or do you have to use Ctrl-C to stop? 4. --no-split .info says this makes ddrescue "not try to split error areas. Allows a fast recovery of the non-damaged part of the file." Is this related to the --truncate option? 5. --max-errors=N "Maximum number of errors allowed before giving up. Defaults to infinity." What happens if you do not set this option? What changes if you do? What is causing the "error"? What happens when N is reached (i.e. when it gives up)? 6. --quiet What effect does this have? 7. How do you know if a hard drive has I/O errors? 8. Which command options should I use if I want ddrescue to make a quick pass over the damaged hard drive and grab all the good, easy-to-read data? Let's say the damaged drive is /dev/hdc and the good drive to receive the image is /dev/hdd. 9. Finally, help me level-set my expectations. What are some of your typical start-to-finish times for creating a hard drive image? Please specify your HD size and how long it took ddrescue to create the image. Thanks! James _______________________________________________ Bug-ddrescue mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-ddrescue
