iRecover failing

[Rolin]

I've been trying to recover data on an external hard drive, but it has a lot of damaged sectors.  I've run iRecover with the follow settngs: timeout set to 1000, retry attempts 1, avoid repeated retries checked, skip factor maxed to 2048.  It took about 20 hours to run, but eventually the program hangs the entire computer. I've done this 2 times - a lot of time invested in this! Can't get it to complete so I can see the results. 

I really want the photos and movies, so I ran "image recovery" - this time it completed. I saved the results file (just in case something bad happened and I didn't want to scan it again) and started to recover the data to a folder.  Ran fine, but the program eventually hung and wouldn't respond.  I had to reboot the computer. I started iRecover again and loaded my saved results file and began the recovery of the data to a folder again - this time all the data recovered is bad - no jpgs will open (they opened fine on the initial attempt).

Most of the damaged area starts around 90 percent into the drive (600GB drive), but there isn't any data on those sectors.  There is damage in the data area, but not nearly as bad as it is at 90 percent.

Here are my following questions:
1)  is there a way to only scan about 30 percent of the drive only.  The rest of the drive is pretty much empty and a waste of time and very risky to the hard drive since it's very damaged at 90 percent.

2) After an image file scan, you get a list of the files avail to recover.  I saved these results.  I tried to load this file again to see if I can recover the data without scanning the entire hard drive again, but the data is all corrupted.  Why is this, when the files were not corrupted in the initial scan?  Only when I reload the file again, all data is corrupted.  I really don't want to completely rescan this entire hard drive again if I don't have to.

Lots of time into this... getting a little frustrated.  Hope someone can offer some help

Thank you!

[Joep]

Hello,

I've been trying to recover data on an external hard drive, but it has a lot of damaged sectors.  I've run iRecover with the follow settngs: timeout set to 1000, retry attempts 1, avoid repeated retries checked, skip factor maxed to 2048.  It took about 20 hours to run, but eventually the program hangs the entire computer. I've done this 2 times - a lot of time invested in this! Can't get it to complete so I can see the results

In this scenario it is a better idea to clone or image the disk. This way you only have to read the disk once. In iRecover, right click a physical device or partition and select the image file creation option.

I really want the photos and movies, so I ran "image recovery" - this time it completed

The image recovery feature is written with small device such as memory cards in mind. Using this mode on harddisks is not supported.

Here are my following questions:
1)  is there a way to only scan about 30 percent of the drive only.  The rest of the drive is pretty much empty and a waste of time and very risky to the hard drive since it's very damaged at 90 percent.

Yes. Right click a physical device and select 'define partition manually'. In that screen hit help for suggestions. If in your case there was only one volue on the disk, set start sector at zero and for size enter amount of sectors of the device - 10% (to avoid the bad area), or minus 70% if you want.

2) After an image file scan, you get a list of the files avail to recover.  I saved these results.  I tried to load this file again to see if I can recover the data without scanning the entire hard drive again, but the data is all corrupted.  Why is this, when the files were not corrupted in the initial scan?

I don't know. If the disk remained unchanged then this shouldn't happen. I will investigate. Try loading a save file that was automatically saved instead.

EDIT: I tested this and can't reproduce. I tried: Image recovery > scan (USB) hard disk > files intact (verified). Save internal program state and exit iRecover. Fire up iRecover, load previous state file. All data present and intact. Of course I have done this with a physically intact USB disk.

[Rolin]

Thanks.  I am trying to make an image file (about 300GB), but it is really stuck on some bad sectors.  I followed your tip on creating the image file, but there are no options to skip over bad sectors after 1 count, etc.  I was hoping there would be some settings like when in recovery mode. I'm afraid this drive will crash if it keeps trying to access these bad sectors over and over and over, etc!

Making an "Image File" in iRecover is for cloning a failing hard drive.  Is this similar to Diskpatch (which I don't have)? When doing data recovery on a failing hard drive, shouldn't there be more options to skip over bad sectors or are we damaging the drive futher by making too many attempts on damaged areas?

Thank you!

[Joep]

Hello,

Go into data recovery for linux and windows > goto the scan and adjust disk access options there. When done click <<. Now in the disk/partition screen right click the disk to be imaged.

We'll have a this later this week. The disk access controls used to be in a seperate floating screen and were accessible while cloning also. Since the disk access options are now part of the main window we'll need to make some changes to make them available when cloning. It will probably be done by wednesday.

[Rolin]

Thanks for the reply. This has been running for about 36 hours. Got stuck at 32.5 percent after a few hours. It has taken about 30 hours to advance from 32.2% to 34.3%.  I'm nervous about stopping it at this point - keep thinking I'll be past the bad area soon.  Would you stop it and start it again changing the settings per your reply?  

BTW: Most of the severe damage is at the end of the drive (seen on my last scan with iRecover), so I followed your instructions and set the drive parameters manually to 0-300MB, then started an image file.  Is it possible it's scanning the last 300MB instead of the 1st 300MB?  It just seems like I hit a severely damaged area this time, and I can't help but think it's imaging the end of the drive.

[Joep]

FYI: iRecover 5.2 can now be downloaded. In 5.2 we fixed the issue where disk access parameters can't be accessed during the imaging process.

Note: disk cache options are not relevant to the imager - they're ignored. Typical settings for a bad disk are:

* "Timeout" - set to 200 ms unless doing RAID recovery. For a RAID recovery, set to 500.
* "Retry attempts" - set to 1 unless the analysis is unacceptably slow. To increase speed, set to 0.
* "Avoid repeated retries" - enable.
* "Skip factor" - set to 32, unless the analysis is unacceptably slow. To increase speed, gradually increase "Skip factor" until satisfactory speed is achieved.

"Force bus reset" should be disabled in most applications, even on a disk with bad sectors.