Photorec keeps restarting search.

Using PhotoRec to recover lost data
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jonnsl
Posts: 3
Joined: 14 Mar 2016, 16:07

Photorec keeps restarting search.

#1 Post by jonnsl »

Hello,

I'm trying to use photorec to recover some videos, but every time a file is found (a corrupt file actually), the search goes to back to sector 0, and the completion time jumps to something like 500h. also the pass 0 never goes through the whole hdd, it skips to pass 1 at around sector 190461804/10610098176 even though no headers were found. its this behavior normal? I left photorec running for almost 40h, it found around 100 small mpg files, all corrupt.
I'm running photorec on a LVM of 5059GiB, does this exceed the maximum "partition" size?
I'm using photorec 7.0 on archlinux.

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cgrenier
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Re: Photorec keeps restarting search.

#2 Post by cgrenier »

Can you try using the 7.1-WIP version ?
You should also select the logical volume and not the the volume group or the physical volume.

jonnsl
Posts: 3
Joined: 14 Mar 2016, 16:07

Re: Photorec keeps restarting search.

#3 Post by jonnsl »

Hi, thanks for the reply.
I compiled the 7.1-WIP version, and the same thing is still happening.
here is a video I recorded showing what is happening: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgNiNthyQiA . you can skip to 12:45 to see the search going back to the start.
by the way i'm using Linux 4.4.3-1-ARCH

also, does selecting only 1 file format makes the search less likely to return results, or less likely to guess the block size correctly?

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cgrenier
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Re: Photorec keeps restarting search.

#4 Post by cgrenier »

Yes, it's better to only disable a filetype if there is a problem with it:
- it's harder to detect the block size when most filetype are disabled,
- recovered files are larger than they should as PhotoRec stops the recovery of a file when a new one is found, and less files are found when few filetypes are enabled

jonnsl
Posts: 3
Joined: 14 Mar 2016, 16:07

Re: Photorec keeps restarting search.

#5 Post by jonnsl »

ok, I'm gonna try again leaving the default file options. It would be nice if you could add that to the wiki, so other people don't make the same mistake I did.

Just one more question, I only have a 500gb external hdd, obviously not enough to recover everything, can I delete some unwanted files while the search is still going?

thanks very much for the help, you have been really helpful.

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cgrenier
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Re: Photorec keeps restarting search.

#6 Post by cgrenier »

Yes, you can delete recovered files while the recovery is still running

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