Re: [Bug-ddrescue] Skipping over tar pits

[Antonio Diaz Diaz]

Hi Ole,

Sorry for the late answer, but I'm busy enjoying my vacation. :-)

Ole Tange wrote:
> It looks like Ketil is right: I get around ~50 MB of tar pit and ~150
> MB of smooth sailing. Then ~50 MB of tar pit again. The drive is
> hts545050b9a300 and has 250 GB/platter + 4 heads according to
> https://www.hgst.com/sites/default/files/resources/TS5K500B_DS_final.pdf
>
> Given that I have finite amount of time what is the most efficient way
> of getting all the data, that is fast to copy, and skip the data, that
> is in the tarpit?

As ddrescue is currently scraping, and -a only works during the copying 
phase, maybe a combination of --try-again and -c1 (perhaps with a large 
--skip-size if the drive is not returning errors) could solve your problem:

  ddrescue --try-again -c1 --skip-size=50MB


Best regards,
Antonio.