Re: [Bug-ddrescue] speed up ddrescue

[Martin Bittermann]

> hi,
> first of all, thanks for your hard work
>
> i m trying to make an iso of a damaged hdd(160Gb, buffer I/O err) that 
> contains all my files, projects etc.., so i need it as soon as possible
>
> i would like to know if i can speed up ddrescue somehow
> my current specs: ubuntu 13.04 x64, i7  4-cores and a custom linux 
> 3.10 kernel for better performances + ddrescue 1.17 stable
>
> an option to select how many cores to use would be appreciated
>
> it is really slow, i know that these things take times, but i have a 
> good pc so i think i can do this in less time
>
> thanks

Hi,

If your rescue is going slow, the cause is most likely your damaged hard 
disk.
The processor time that ddrescue uses is neglegible, parallelizing 
ddrescue to use more than one processor core would be pointless.
Most time is spend waiting for disk I/O. Especially on damaged drives, 
I/O times can increase by orders of magnitude. You'll just have to wait 
until it finishes. If the drive does not yield any data for hours, you 
should start investigating the cause and maybe try tweaking the settings 
of ddrescue.

Good luck with your rescue.

Martin.