2

I'm attempting to rescue a failed NTFS HDD via ntfsclone:

  • I began to copy sector by sector via: 
    ntfsclone --rescue --force --overwrite '/dev/sda1' '/dev/sdb1'
    It runs quickly up to 30% then tries to log bad sectors, becoming extremely slow, and I hear the drive's motor and heads running, so I think it attempts several times to read any bad sectors
    • --rescue: continue to process any bad sector found
    • --force: continue if the volume is dirty

Any suggestions to speed this up, or perhaps it's better to use ddrescue to do this job?

JW0914
  • 9,096
ultradj83
  • 61

1 Answers1

1

Typically the answer is yes, it is better to use ddrescue. The goal is always to stress a defective drive in the least possible way. Using a defective drive is likely to cause more dammage.

The ddrescue logic ensures to avoid areas with lots of broken sectors and recovering a big share of a defective drive before tackling broken areas.

You used ntfsclone instead. This might only be a good idea in special cases because ntfsclone only duplicates used sectors as opposed to what you said: "sector by sector".

In cases where your source partition is only lightly used, using ntfsclone you might stress the drive less but it comes at the expense of additional time once your broken sectors are positioned in series and ntfsclone won't try to jump over that area and cover it later.

r2d3
  • 4,050