[Bug-ddrescue] New Updated Passthrough Patch Available

[Scott Dwyer]

I have released a new version of my ddrescue passthrough patch which can 
be found at the following site:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/ddrutility/files/ddrescue%20patches/passthrough%20patch/

The main change is that previously when using the passthrough option and 
an abnormal error would happen (something other than a normal read 
error, like the drive locking up), ddrescue would exit without saving 
the most recent version of the logfile, which could mean that some data 
would need to be re-read. It will now save the logfile when it exits.

The second change is adding an option that will allow the marking of the 
current block if an abnormal error happens. This would be useful if the 
drive in question gets abnormal errors when reading bad sectors. By 
default it would not mark it as a bad sector/block, so when restarting 
ddrescue (likely after power cycling the drive) it would try to read the 
bad sector again, causing another abnormal error. The new option will 
allow this bad marking so that a rescue may be resumed without 
attempting to re-read the bad block until trimming and scraping.

It has come to my attention that an additional benefit to using the 
ata-passthrough or scsi-passthrough option is that under some 
conditions, it will catch an abnormal error and exit, where a normal 
ddrescue will just start marking all the blocks as failed which is very 
undesirable. I do not know if this works under all conditions.


The changelog is as follows:

ddrescue-1.19 SGIO patch-2.1 20150106
  Added code so that if an error other than a normal read error 
happens, ddrescue will now properly exit saving the most recent changes 
to the logfile. The previous version exited abruptly without saving the 
logfile.

  Added the option --mark-abnormal-error, so when an abnormal error 
happens during a read attempt (that causes program exit) the cluster is 
marked as non-trimmed. A single sector read (clustersize 1) would result 
in the sector being marked as bad.

  Added short sense key definitions to abnormal error output.


Enjoy!
Scott