Posting this on the list, I think I accidentally replied privately by mistake.
> Is this a Seagate drive in the Rosewood family? It's certainly a Seagate HDD. Apparently it's in the Barracuda family. Model number: ST2000LM015-2E81 > Sample of "moLD" sector: > > https://00289684175589411622.googlegroups.com/attach/3060916de6bc3/Screenshot%202023-09-03%20132510.png?part=0.1&view=1 > That matches my output almost exactly. Just verified it, ddrescue just keeps reading that over and over again. At first it froze for quite a bit of time while the kernel logged some I/O errors to the Linux console. Then the I/O errors stop and ddrescue resumes reading again, but that pattern is all it ever gets back from the drive. I assume the "moLD" is part of some kind of header? I found these forum posts on the web about it: https://www.recoveryforce.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=595&start=10 Appears to be some kind of bad block pattern. --- As I suspected, that's an SMR Rosewood model. I don't know what causes this phenomenon, but it is well known in the data recovery business. --- Wow. I've read that SMR drives were quite problematic. I can't believe I was using one of these things all this time. I assume the drive is pretty much dead then. Tomorrow I'll get to work on restoring everything ddrescue managed to get out.
