Re: How to force copy retries until finally copied all due to a dying old HDD in Linux?

Date	2015-02-20 22:47 -0800
From	Ant <ant@zimage.comANT>
Newsgroups	comp.os.linux.misc, comp.os.linux.help, comp.os.linux.setup, comp.os.linux.hardware
Subject	Re: How to force copy retries until finally copied all due to a dying old HDD in Linux?
References	<wsednYGSWe_iyTTJnZ2dnUU7-UednZ2d@earthlink.com> <m93ani$vp6$1@omega-3a.local> <cvmdnYJ2QMfvByvJnZ2dnUU7-VOdnZ2d@earthlink.com> <m968gb$ng5$1@dont-email.me> <dflirb-0ri.ln1@pc.home>
Message-ID	<DIednWdOgJmAt3XJnZ2dnUU7-W2dnZ2d@earthlink.com> (permalink)

Cross-posted to 4 groups.

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>>>>> Ah. Well, I ended up with a brand new 2 TB WD HDD (partitioned in half
>>>>> with EXT4 FS) and my hardware friend replaced the dying HDD in my PC.
>>>>> Dying HDD is my
>>>>> sdg(5 is the one I want to copy) and the new HDD partition I am making
>>>>> an image is in /media/Storage2b/CopiedDyingStorage and 1 TB better be
>>>>> enough. I hope
>>>>> I am doing this correctly for over a day so far:
>>>>>
>>>>> # time ddrescue /dev/sdg5 /media/Storage2b/CopiedDyingStorage
>>>>> ImageFileLog
>>>>>
>>>>> GNU ddrescue 1.16
>>>>> Press Ctrl-C to interrupt
>>>>> Initial status (read from logfile)
>>>>> rescued:     8641 MB,  errsize:  29099 MB,  errors:      42
>>>>> Current status
>>>>> rescued:     8641 MB,  errsize:  29099 MB,  current rate:        0 B/s
>>>>> rescued:     8718 MB,  errsize:  71006 MB,  current rate:    16384 B/s
>>>>>      ipos:    18350 kB,   errors:      56,    average rate:     1041 B/s
>>>>>      opos:    18350 kB,     time since last successful read:       0 s
>>>>> Splitting failed blocks...
>>
>> I think that the reason it is taking so long is taht your disk is really
>> really borked-- ie loads of it is unreadable. It keeps trying a few
>> times to reread each sector, and cannot. I think you will need to wave
>> goodbye to all of the data on that disk.
>> If the disk were good, it would be reading it at many MB/sec.
>
> I recovered files from a "dead" HD for my friend.  I forget how big it
> was but I used essentially this method.  It was slow reading the source
> and there was lots of clicking, but mounting the image and copying from
> it ran at normal speeds.

I somewhat gave up on it. It was too slow and not moving:

       22499 Jan 17 17:44 ImageFileLog
31987306496 Jan 14 05:03 CopiedDyingStorageImage

3 days of nothing! I still have the "dead" drive so I could retry if I 
wanted to.
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