[Bug-ddrescue] quickly skipping SATA media errors

[Werner LEMBERG]

[Please CC me since I'm not subscribed to this list.]

I've asked this question on stackexchange

  http://superuser.com/questions/482447/quickly-skipping-sata-media-errors

but I got no reply, so I'm trying here :-)


I had a head crash on a SATA HDD.  Zillions of blocks are damaged, and
I try to save the contents to another HDD using ddrescue on a
GNU/Linux rescue system booted from a DVD.

The very problem is that accessing a single bad block takes up to 40
seconds.  Obviously, the hard disk tries to re-read for some time
until it gives up.  Looking this up in the internet it seems that the
HDD itself takes such a long time (it's a Toshiba HDD).  Now my
question: is there any method to make this faster?  For example,
telling the SATA controller to try reading only once and not, say 10
times until an I/O error gets returned?

I know how to play with ddrescue options, BTW, so I can do a kind of
binary search to find the start and the end of the large bad block
areas, but having a full scan which doesn't take weeks would be
nice...

Thanks in advance for any pointers!


    Werner