Re: [Bug-ddrescue] partition size for ddrescue direct to device

[Ariel]

On Fri, 23 Sep 2005 address@hidden wrote:

> thanks so much for the info. the partition type is apple HFS and the filesystem
> is "mac os extended (journaled)"

Hmm, don't know much about this fs.

> i do have another firewire 800 drive ready to go so i can just parititon it
> smaller and copy the data straight off the current target. can you tell me some
> commands to do this or a place to look? i have searched google ...

If this was linux I could help you, but I don't know the commands on macs.

Basically partition the new drive to EXACTLY (to the byte, or sector) the 
same size as the old one.

First you need to find out the old size, second how to create a new 
partition to match it. (Probably the same partition tool will do both, but 
only if it reports data on partition sizes exactly - some tools round it 
to the nearest MB.) It's called cfdisk on linux.

Then copy the data from the first drive to the second. When it fills the 
new drive it will complain that it is out of space (because the source is 
larger), but don't worry about that. If the new partition is exactly the 
same size as the old, it will have copied everything.

I don't even know what tool to use for the copying. I'd use dd with a 
large bs (blocksize, the default one will take forever) on linux. Plain 
old cp should work fine.

> at this point ddrescue has slowed to a crawl and pulls mostly junk... it should
> be done any time now, the drive was 80gb and its at 76-something

31MB to go. (80000000000 bytes = 76293MB).

        -Ariel

PS. Do not delete the temporary partition until you have finished the 
recovery using your firewire 800 drive. You may find that a critical block 
is missing and the recovery found nothing, or other possibilities. So save 
the recovered version untouched, while you work on a copy of it.

PPS. You can copy the data now (while ddrescue is running) and do a 
recovery on the firewire 800 drive to see what you get (help you decide if 
to let ddrescue keep working or not).

Sorry I can't help more then this.