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I have a broken 4TB NTFS Seagate HDD with thousands of tiff images with measurement data:

Ubuntu Disk tells me, "Disk is OK, one bad sector", Contents: "Unknown".

The BIOS doesn't recognize the disk. Windows Explorer doesn't recognize it either.

But the Windows Disk Management shows Disk "Unknown / Not initialized / Unallocated'.

I am currently trying to make an image of the broken HDD with ddrescue:

"ddrescue -n /dev/sda /media/ubuntu/NewHDD/rescue.img /media/ubuntu/USB/rescue.log"

I used the "-n" command to copy as much healthy data as possible in a first run and skip trimming. I want to try to copy the unhealthy data in a later run with "ddrescue -r3". According to Ubuntu.com / Forensics Wiki this should be the way to go.

Since I started this over an hour ago, I get the following ddrescue terminal output:

current rate: 0 B/s average rate: 0 B/s error rate: 393 B/S

rescued: 0 B

non-trimmed: 1746 MB non-scraped: 0 B bad-sector: 0 B

As far as I understand this means that up to now no healthy data was found, otherwise rescued would be > 0B.

Based on Ubuntu Disks statement of one Bad sector is seems strange to me that nothing could be restored yet. And further, only this first run takes approximately 111 days based on the speed of the first hour. The time for the intensive trimming phase is not even included.

Has anyone any ideas why this takes so long? What might be wrong? Or any other ideas? I can't wait over three months just to complete the first step.

Thanks :-)

1 Answer 1

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Answer: Try out the -d parameter [in order to make ddrescue use direct I/O to circumvent any possible problem in the operating system and its caching mechanism].

Comment: How is your disc connected during rescue and how was it connected before?

[] added 4.10.2020 18:48 MESZ

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  • This is more a comment than an answer. Asking for clarification should definitely be done in a comment. Oct 4, 2020 at 14:15
  • Why is this more a comment than an answer? If I understand you correctly you want my response to be split into an answer and a comment? Is there any site policy that I missed? Please let me know.
    – r2d3
    Oct 4, 2020 at 16:17
  • "Try foo" is "any other idea" the OP asks for. So it's an answer. Without explaining what foo does and why it might help it's a low quality answer IMO, still an answer. The policy on questions that request feedback from the OP is here: "You should submit a comment if you want to request clarification from the author". Questions that don't request feedback are different. E.g. "How is your disc connected?" can be used in an answer if the answer continues with "If via USB then … (conditional answer). If via SATA then … (conditional answer)". Oct 4, 2020 at 16:44
  • My disk is purely internal. It is connected via sata and was connected via sata before. In the meantime I realized that pass 1 to pass 4 are completed within a few minutes and that pass 5 would take forever. I will try out the -d parameter and report later, thanks for that! Oct 6, 2020 at 8:03

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