Re: ddrescue session too long

[Antonio Diaz Diaz]

Dear Radule,

Radule Soskic wrote:
> I am trying to rescue data from a damaged external HDD (WD Elements 3TB).
> It is a MacOS disk, and I am using ddrescue v1.27 on Linux.

It seems that the HDD (or the kernel) has entered an "error mode" in which 
it is not returning any data and is taking much time to report each read error.

I would stop ddrescue (with Ctrl-C), switch off the power to the HDD, wait 
some time, switch on the power again, check that the HDD is still accesible 
as /dev/sdc, and finally run ddrescue again. Maybe this sequence would make 
the HDD to read data again. Cooling the HDD may also help.

> Should I interrupt the process? If so, what to do next? The image file
> is smaller than the original disk, how can I repair it? Should I try
> Mac first aid command, or fsck maybe?

Ideally you should let ddrescue finish copying the HDD, then make a copy of 
the copy, and then try to repair this second copy (so that you can recopy it 
from the first copy if the repair goes wrong).

Hope this helps.

Best regards,
Antonio.