testdisk scan time

How to use TestDisk to recover lost partition
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lizard3
Posts: 1
Joined: 06 Oct 2023, 07:33

testdisk scan time

#1 Post by lizard3 »

hello, trying to check a 3T usb disks that seems bad. Disk has definitely bad sectors in it, windows does not format it. starts but after sometime it says the disk cannot be formated. The capacity is correct and the filesystem is recognized as RAW.

I ran TestDisk on a linux machine, started going, then got stuck at cylinder 99 for about 12 hours now. i am wondering it it hang but the disk light is flashing. Is this sort of times normal?
recuperation
Posts: 3026
Joined: 04 Jan 2019, 09:48
Location: Hannover, Deutschland (Germany, Allemagne)

Re: testdisk scan time

#2 Post by recuperation »

lizard3 wrote: 06 Oct 2023, 07:40 hello, trying to check a 3T usb disks that seems bad. Disk has definitely bad sectors in it,
Too avoid increasing dammage on your disk you should duplicate your bad disk using ddrescue as described in the manual. This will give you an overview about the total dammage in terms of unreadable sectors and you can watch first-hand how the recovery/duplication process slows down when ddrescue is confronted with unreadable sectors.
Afterwards you should duplicate your duplicate the same way. That will allow you to play with your second duplicate. Relying on being able to recreate a duplicate from a dammaged disk should be avoided because the outcome on a second run could contain less data. Creating the second duplicate should reach the sustained transfer speed of your drive as there are no more unreadable sectors involved.

windows does not format it. starts but after sometime it says the disk cannot be formated. The capacity is correct and the filesystem is recognized as RAW.

I ran TestDisk on a linux machine, started going, then got stuck at cylinder 99 for about 12 hours now. i am wondering it it hang but the disk light is flashing. Is this sort of times normal?
Which version of TestDisk do you use?
The behaviour you are experiencing is not normal.
If you run TestDisk on a duplicate, it should run through. You might experience slowdowns with ddrescue but this is what it has been build for: Dealing with disks that contain unreadable sectors.
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