cgsecurity.org

I have a HDD which responds in windows saying it needs formatting

I ran partedmagic from a boot cd but could not manage to mount the drive

I started testdisk and ran quick search but it is very very slow like at cuirrent speed may take > 100 hours to complete.

Also EVERY change of n to the display it shows

Analyse cylinder n/476939 xx%
Read error at n/1/1 (lba=<some large number>)

It is currently up to 12750 aprox and 02% after around 3 hours
I am trying to establish whether what is being displayed and the current progress
tells us 'anything' about the liklihood of success?

Its extremely slow for me, Looks like it will go on for weeks and I need to ensure that power doesn't go off.
Is there any way to speedup the process?

reduce the number of retries on I/O failure

I resolved the speed issue. Stupidly I had the drive in a USB enclosure. When accessed directly it was a lot faster.

What I'd be interested in now is a precise meaning of the

. Read error at n/1/1 (lba=<some large number>)

Could it mean there were physical read errors or CRC errors but that it so read after retries? Could it mean it gave up after all retries? Does 1/1 mean platter 1 sector 1, why is it always 1/1 ?

I'm not sure there are many people on this forum actually.