Re: [Bug-ddrescue] Feature Suggestion: Automatic Cooldown mode

[Antonio Diaz Diaz]

David Deutsch wrote:
> > It could also be useful to have the final logfile to see where are the 
> > unrecoverable errors.
>
> Alright, I will try to keep that in mind. If I fail to do that, feel
> free to remind me, as I would be happy to share.

I have just noted it in the todo list of ddrescue. Thanks.


> First, the error count had been at 26460 before and starting the
> command with -A made it jump to 40691:

This is normal. For example, every -*- sequence, which counts as one 
error, is converted to -?- which counts as two errors. (There are 40689 
bad-sector areas in the logfile).


> It is quite slow right now, but I suppose that is because I had
> already gone over that area of the drive without the -A option and
> there aren't any large sectors left in the beginning. Once it does
> find one of the good sectors, it does seem faster already, though. So
> overall, it's about the same speed, it just switches between 0 B/s and
> even hundreds of kB/s at times.

I think what was making ddrescue slow before the -A was the reading of 
enormous non-trimmed areas sector by sector. To avoid the recreation of 
such areas, I have just modified ddrescue to not mark skipped blocks as 
non-trimmed, but try them in additional passes (before trimming), just 
as in the case of slow reads.

You can find the modified version here:
http://download-mirror.savannah.gnu.org/releases/ddrescue/ddrescue-1.18-pre7.tar.lz

Try it with your current logfile, without giving it the -A option again.

I hope it will speed up your rescue.


> The other observation is not strictly for you - but having
> ddrescueview running on the side and marking everything as non-tried
> was a little bit of a shocker, because the color for that is a dark
> gray. For some reason, that looks even worse than the red for the Bad
> Sectors - like these blocks aren't just bad, they're already dead!
> Just my two cents, but maybe a lighter color is the better choice
> here, since we're assuming those blocks to be fresh for checking?

I do not maintain ddrescueview, but surely Martin is reading this. ;-)