TestDisk on 86%, analysing very slowly

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damian
Posts: 2
Joined: 26 Jan 2014, 15:41

TestDisk on 86%, analysing very slowly

#1 Post by damian »

Hello,

I've had a problem with a dedicated web server I rent where both hard disks on the raid have failed. This happened around yesterday lunch time, the server stopped responding and it appeared to have gone into a reboot loop.

The hosting company removed the disks and put some new ones in. They've plugged one of the old ones in via USB, but it comes up in Disk Management in windows as "Dynamic - Invalid". They set TestDisk 6.14 running on it last night, but around mid-morning it seemed to have hung at 85% so they restarted it. However, it again hung at 85%, but they did notice this time that the cylinder being analysed was increasing, albeit very slowly. They left it running in the hope that it would maybe get over some bad cylinders, then speed up again.

However, its now 2.45pm and its only moved up to 86%. It is still going through the cylinders, but only 1 every 6 minutes or so, its currently on 26217 of 30400. However, its not currently displaying any read errors - would it normally show read errors on this screen if there were any, and if so, and the fact it isn't, is this a good sign that its likely to be able to recover data?

Also, is it likely that after its gone over so many cylinders it might suddenly speed up again?

Unfortunately, although I used to download the backups from the server regularly, I haven't done this for a while, so all the database backups are sitting on that drive. They did manage to get to the c: partition and I looked through it last night, but I don't keep anything on there, its all on d:.

If its being this slow to run, what is the likelihood of it succeeding and recovering the data?

I'd appreciate any advice - I've been working on this for almost 24 hours solid now, haven't had sleep for about 36 hours, so I'm just a little stressed at the moment and am in need of some good newss.

karpi
Posts: 2
Joined: 12 Oct 2014, 10:53
Location: Koblenz, Germany

Re: TestDisk on 86%, analysing very slowly

#2 Post by karpi »

Oh yeah. That's my issue also.
TESTDISK 10/2014 started to copy 5 files/second. But 30 hours later it is only one file per 10 minutes!!! Boring.

Booting the machine with USB3-KNOPPIX-bootstick.
Powersave off
TESTDISK checked the unallocated space (formerly 1.8TB NTFS Data) in 2 hours
I saw my files with P-Option
and started to copy all marked (with ":", nice) to extern 2TB-USB-Drive
(seaching and binding the right device is for learning linux)
paralleel started gParted and Strg+R wakeup now every 20 min my HD

Question: Whats going on? What's wrong? Is there anythink more? Time is asleeping itself. Oh man ...
Are "damian" and "Andy48" alive yet, or sceleted in front there machines? :)

btw: Testdisk is the greatest tool I've seen last time.
:D Thank YOU Christophe in Le Perreux sur Marne very much! :D

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cgrenier
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Posts: 5432
Joined: 18 Feb 2012, 15:08
Location: Le Perreux Sur Marne, France
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Re: TestDisk on 86%, analysing very slowly

#3 Post by cgrenier »

They are probably bad sectors. You should clone the disk first to a new empty disk using ddrescue and run TestDisk against the clone.
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/Damaged_Hard_Disk

damian
Posts: 2
Joined: 26 Jan 2014, 15:41

Re: TestDisk on 86%, analysing very slowly

#4 Post by damian »

I am still alive, but death from a mixture of boredom and panic wasn't very far off :)

I finally, after a couple of days of leaving it running, ended up coming to the realisation that I wouldn't be getting the data back. I knew at some point the hosting company would have to use the hard-drive caddy for something else and would unplug it, but decided just to leave it running until that time just in case, by some miracle, it would suddenly wake up, run through, and recover all my files.

I can't remember exactly how long it was in the end, but it will have been a few days later that I logged into the server to see if they'd unplugged it and, to my amazement, it had finished, and was giving me some options to continue - managed to get up a list of all the files on the D drive and recovered them all.

This software is amazing.

So my advice would be, if possible, just leave it running for as long as possible as the likelihood is, from my experience anyway, it will get over some bad sectors and will complete.

karpi
Posts: 2
Joined: 12 Oct 2014, 10:53
Location: Koblenz, Germany

Re: TestDisk on 86%, analysing very slowly

#5 Post by karpi »

Many thanks damian for your suggestion to stay on my recovery process. The counter and my hope is rising up. I'll trust in you :) I'll give an abstract after ending my odyssey.

Maybe Christophe the reason are bad sectors. Thanks for quick response. For next releases of TESTDISK the loop for checking (bad) sectors should be shorten, or - I propose - manually (y/n) skippable by user. Doesn't the deeper partition check determine the bad sectors, to jump over during copying files?

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