XPost: aus.computers   
   From: nospam@needed.invalid   
      
   On Fri, 11/28/2025 4:20 PM, Lawrence D’Oliveiro wrote:   
   > On Fri, 28 Nov 2025 11:52:19 -0500, Paul wrote:   
   >   
   >> I found another program that claims to be a cloning tool. It is like   
   >> ddrescue, except it uses a separate driver for the "bad" disk, that   
   >> driver is capable of keeping the bad driver operating, it truncates   
   >> error recovery on the drive and so on.   
   >   
   > You probably don’t want to use it. The point of ddrescue is to   
   > absolutely minimize further wear and tear on the dying drive, not to   
   > keep running it.   
   >   
      
   It takes time to extract all the data.   
      
   I was promised that maybe "ddrescue" would take 40 days   
   for the initial pass.   
      
   The competing tool HDDSuperClone is finished now,   
   and it also can export a ddrescue.log compatible file to   
   account for the level of progress. The log   
   currently has around 10,000 lines of text.   
   The ddrescue, when I stopped it, had 1424 lines   
   of text.   
      
   If I want, I can now go back to ddrescue, and   
   run the "second pass" to whittle down the 10,000 lines.   
   I can use the compatible file to do it.   
      
   The 250GB sick disk, the data is not important on it, so   
   I can test potential tools and see what kind of   
   result they turn up.   
      
   ddrescue has no way to reset the disk, when the disk   
   pulls one of its stunts. The HDDSuperClone had no   
   problem keeping the sick disk in operational condition.   
   If the disk pulled a disappearing act, the driver   
   restarted it (it has "soft reset" and "hard reset"   
   command sequences of some sort). When I switch back   
   to ddrescue, I will have to be careful to not ask   
   it to do things that trigger a controller-initiated reset.   
   Using --reverse was what I tried before, and it seemed   
   to stay up longer while being scanned in reverse.   
   That's a problem specific to this particular drive.   
      
   Using a hex editor, I stepped out to the sectors   
   just before 250,059,350,016 and I found the GPT secondary table   
   there. That helps me verify I'm at the end of the drive   
   near that address (that's on the clone drive, not   
   the sick drive).   
      
   Apparently the data recovery community has a "hardware cloner"   
   that does a disk to disk copy. And it does the same sorts   
   of things that the HDDSuperClone does with its driver. They're   
   all using ATA command set to advantage. Whereas ddrescue doesn't   
   work at that level, so it is harder to tame the sick drive.   
      
      Paul   
      
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