Support alternative output image formats?

[Christian Franke]

Are there any plans to support other output formats than raw images?

I recently did some tests with AFF format 
(https://github.com/sshock/AFFLIBv3) to provide it for Cygwin as an 
enhancement to sleuthkit.

AFF is a segmented format which supports compression, encryption and 
signing. Using it instead of raw images could significantly reduce the 
size of output images if the disk contents is compressible. AFF 
Development packages are available in all major distributions. The 
format is also supported by forensic tools like sleuthkit.

To check whether this also works with the seek+write patterns of 
ddrescue, I tested with the attached quick proof-of-concept patch. It 
only supports basic ddrescue operation without special options. The 
extra code I also added to fake random read errors is not included.

It should be straightforward to optionally add alternative output 
formats by introducing an abstract output layer with 
open/close/seek/write/allocate/flush member functions.

OT: Recently I had a very interesting real word testcase for ddrescue:
A 4TB Seagate ST4000NM0265 with massive seek problems could be 
completely recovered by running ddrescue (Cygwin) for about two weeks 
24x7, except for one single sector. Required changing ddrescue 
parameters several times and reduction of disk's own ERC time (with 
smartctl).

--
Regards,
Christian

ddrescue-1.29-pre1-test-afflib.patch
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