[Bug-ddrescue] Help on DDrescue

[Jonathan QUINTANILLA]

Dear all,

I have a 320GB faling drive, partitioned as 20GB for "Windows+Program files" (dev/sbd1) and 300GB for "My Documents" (dev/sdb5). So far I remember that I never have more of 30GB of Data (jpeg, mp3, xls, etc...). I buy a new 320GB for the recovery with only one partition (dev/sda1).

I launched ddrescue 1.14 then start my recovery following the manual instructions for my case:
ddrescue -f -n /dev/hda2 /dev/hdb2 logfile
ddrescue -d -f -r3 /dev/hda2 /dev/hdb2 logfile
e2fsck -v -f /dev/hdb2
mount -t ext2 -o ro /dev/hdb2 /mnt
    (read rescued files from /mnt)


Please see the LXTerminal answer:
address@hidden:~$ ddrescue -f -n /dev/sdb5 /dev/sda1 logfile

Press Ctrl-C to interrupt
Initial status (read from logfile)
rescued:         0 B,  errsize:       0 B,  errors:       0
Current status
rescued:    30423 MB,  errsize:    268 GB,  current rate:    28143 B/s
   ipos:     6057 MB,   errors:    2886,    average rate:     432 kB/s
   opos:     6057 MB,     time from last successful read:       0 s
Trimming failed blocks... 
ddrescue: input file disappeared: No such file or directory
address@hidden:~$ ddrescue -f -n /dev/sdb5 /dev/sda1 logfile

Press Ctrl-C to interrupt
Initial status (read from logfile)
rescued:    30423 MB,  errsize:    268 GB,  errors:    2886
Current status
rescued:    30487 MB,  errsize:    268 GB,  current rate:      716 B/s
   ipos:   271912 kB,   errors:    2863,    average rate:     9558 B/s
   opos:   271912 kB,     time from last successful read:       0 s
Finished                
address@hidden:~$ ddrescue -d -f -r3 /dev/sdb5 /dev/sda1 logfile

Press Ctrl-C to interrupt
Initial status (read from logfile)
rescued:    30487 MB,  errsize:    268 GB,  errors:    2863
Current status
rescued:    30487 MB,  errsize:    268 GB,  current rate:        0 B/s
   ipos:     3160 MB,   errors:    2869,    average rate:        1 B/s
   opos:     3160 MB,     time from last successful read:     8.2 m
Splitting failed blocks...


As you can see I get a first bug "ddrescue: input file disappeared: No such file or directory" but when i tried again everything was fine, then it finish the first command ( ddrescue -f -n /dev/sdb5 /dev/sda1 logfile). I don't know if it's important but I notice that before that bug, the errsize was 30-40MB for  something like 2800errors and after it jump up to 268GB with just couple of errors more (2886 exactly).

Actually 268GB seem to be the size of the drive that I have never ever used, so it even never been write at all...

So here come my question, I have been running the second command (ddrescue -d -f -r3 /dev/sdb5 /dev/sda1 logfile) for around five hours and I don't get a big improvement, ipos and opos was 3154 and is now 3160; errors was 2868 and is now 2863. At the most I get " time from last successful read" 3,5hours.

So, What I have to do? Just be patient or stop the current process and carry on with the next command (e2fsck -v -f /dev/sda1)? Is my first time using ddrescue so I dont't know if it's suppose to be THAT long or not...
What about my 268GB errorsize? is it a fake error?

Thank you in advance for the help you will provide to me!!!
Jonathan.