[Bug-ddrescue] Merging two images from the same recovery....

[Dependable-Mike]

Hi,

Looking for some advice.

Running a recovery on my failing 160GB Windows NTFS laptop drive (that has
no file system detected any more! Eeeek. If I can get the 1s and 0s though,
I have some great NTFS file recovery software at my disposal, so got the
best chance of recovery available to me). I'm using a Linux Mint 8 machine
with ddrescue 1.15RC1 to attempt to capture the whole drive.

I ran the command with the new skip ahead on slow areas filter set (-a from
memory?) with no splitting to an image file on a EXT4 partition. It captured
some chunks fast, and skips vast swathes that were transferring slowly at
around 300KB/s. 

Then at one point I wanted to reboot the machine. However, when I restarted
ddrescue, I copied the same command as before, but accidentally forgot to
change the operating directory first!!! Therefore it started a new image
file and log file! WHOOPS!

Fortunately, because I'd incremented the input start location, it at least
captured a new area of the drive into the new image and log file (again a
mix of good data, and slow skipped areas). I was only alerted to mistake
quite a while later when that partition ran out of space so the capture had
to be aborted.

So now I have two partial images of the drive that mostly don't overlap...
and two matching log files to go with them that define the good areas and
slow areas skipped. To minimise stress on the failing drive I've completely
disconnected it for now whilst I work out how to merge the two images and
log files, so that I can carry on running a no split run on the damaged
drive but without having to recapture an area that is already in either
image.

There is an example in the help file about something similar, but I didn't
exactly follow it, or whether I need to mount one of the image files as a
drive first?

Before risking messing things up further, I wanted to check exactly how I
should handle this first.

Kicking myself for not changing directories before the second run...

Mike

PS the new features of RC1 are great and are working as expected for me with
no problems. The only problems I'm facing are operator induced! ;O)

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