# DDRescue off MFSTools CD



## tommage1 (Nov 6, 2008)

I have MFST 3.32. I have a nearly full 4TB Roamio drive with some errors (unmovable sectors). Amazingly it still works in the Roamio, mostly. I don't use it as main drive anymore, just set it aside so I can watch the nearly 4TB of recordings when I want. But I would like to try a DDRescue to a new 4TB drive. Using the MFST 3.32 CD. First of all, anyone know the version of DDRescue on the 3.32 CD? Second, I notice DDRescue needs to create a mapfile. Since my "bad" 4TB is nearly full I'm wondering if there will be room to create the mapfile, I assume it puts it on the new drive the bad drive is being cloned to? Or does it put it on the source/bad drive, if so I'd have to delete some stuff first. But can there be a third drive, just to hold the mapfile? If so, what would the command be I need to run?

# ddrescue -f -n /dev/sd"bad drive" /dev/sd"new drive" then not sure, recovery.log? Or something like /dev/sd"third drive"/recovery.log ? 

Have never used DDRescue and know little to nothing about Linux, just use MFST for copies/upgrades etc. Thanks.


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## jmbach (Jan 1, 2009)

tommage1 said:


> I have MFST 3.32. I have a nearly full 4TB Roamio drive with some errors (unmovable sectors). Amazingly it still works in the Roamio, mostly. I don't use it as main drive anymore, just set it aside so I can watch the nearly 4TB of recordings when I want. But I would like to try a DDRescue to a new 4TB drive. Using the MFST 3.32 CD. First of all, anyone know the version of DDRescue on the 3.32 CD? Second, I notice DDRescue needs to create a mapfile. Since my "bad" 4TB is nearly full I'm wondering if there will be room to create the mapfile, I assume it puts it on the new drive the bad drive is being cloned to? Or does it put it on the source/bad drive, if so I'd have to delete some stuff first. But can there be a third drive, just to hold the mapfile? If so, what would the command be I need to run?
> 
> # ddrescue -f -n /dev/sd"bad drive" /dev/sd"new drive" then not sure, recovery.log? Or something like /dev/sd"third drive"/recovery.log ?
> 
> Have never used DDRescue and know little to nothing about Linux, just use MFST for copies/upgrades etc. Thanks.


If you download MFSTools 3.34-2 it has ddrescue 1.25 on it.

I don't use ddrescue a lot so I would have to Google those questions to verify my recollections. What I remember was that the map and log I placed on the drive I booted up on that held ddrescue.

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## tommage1 (Nov 6, 2008)

jmbach said:


> If you download MFSTools 3.34-2 it has ddrescue 1.25 on it.
> 
> I don't use ddrescue a lot so I would have to Google those questions to verify my recollections. What I remember was that the map and log I placed on the drive I booted up on that held ddrescue.
> 
> Sent from my SM-G998U using Tapatalk


Will do but I can't find 3.34-2? Is that the unreleased new version (that also works with Edge?) If so where can i get, source forge still seems to be 3.32? Thanks.

I did some google myself on the map/log. Looks like if you don't specify a device it would put it SOMEWHERE itself. I use a CD to boot MFST so it could not put there, would have to be one of the two drives I guess. BUT I did find someone who used a 3rd drive just for the logfile. They used a USB flash drive. I assume could use a regular drive if you want. For you, if you boot from a USB device perhaps it could put it there (or you do?) Perhaps I should experiment a bit before trying the actual process.

"*Cloning directly to a new disk*
Now, knowing what we do about ddrescue so far, it is entirely possible to rescue directly from one drive to another, rather than to an image file. Again, be sure to make sure the new drive is an appropriate size as mentioned earlier. Both drives must be connected to the machine that is running linux, either natively or from a live environment like Parted Magic.

Using the command from Part 1 to view the attached block devices, determine the correct names for the drive to be rescued and the drive to be imaged to. Be careful here. If you get this wrong, you could easily image the wrong device to the wrong device, and have a real problem on your hands. Again, the command is:

# lsblk -o name,label,size,fstype,model

Now, assuming for this example that /dev/sda is the old drive and /dev/sdb is the new drive, we proceed as follows:

ddrescue -d -f -r3 /dev/sda /dev/sdb /media/PNY_usb/rescue.logfile

Note that here we need to use a third drive (flash drive in this case, mounted at /media/PNY_usb) on which to store the logfile (rescue.logfile in this case). You can store the logfile anywhere to which you have write access, just not to either of the two drives involved in the imaging process. And again, the same caveats apply to the -r3 switch as in the example from Part 1."

The entire webpage I found this on, I am just interested in the drive to drive use but maybe someone else could use the other info.

Guide to Using DDRescue to Recover Data - Technibble


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## tommage1 (Nov 6, 2008)

Oh, in the example they use -r3, but from what I read that can be dangerous. I myself will also add the -n, which eliminates a "scrape" procedure that can be rough on the source drive with errors. Since my "bad" drive still mostly works in the Tivo I want to put it through as little stress as possible in case the rescue itself does not work.


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## jmbach (Jan 1, 2009)

tommage1 said:


> Will do but I can't find 3.34-2? Is that the unreleased new version (that also works with Edge?) If so where can i get, source forge still seems to be 3.32? .........


The link is found in my original post in the MFSTools 3.2 thread

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## tommage1 (Nov 6, 2008)

jmbach said:


> The link is found in my original post in the MFSTools 3.2 thread
> 
> Sent from my SM-G998U using Tapatalk


That is what I tried. I tried to download the iso, did not work. And the link I see at sourceforge says 3.32, maybe name of the link has not been updated?

The only downloads I see are:

/mfstools-v3.2-20150531.iso (Does not work)

And this, not sure what it is, looks like something from May 2021 but file is very small, maybe very compressed?

MFSTools-snapshot050221-src.tar.gz


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## jmbach (Jan 1, 2009)

tommage1 said:


> That is what I tried. I tried to download the iso, did not work. And the link I see at sourceforge says 3.32, maybe name of the link has not been updated?
> 
> The only downloads I see are:
> 
> ...


If you have the right link it will take you to a gihub page.

Let me see......

Go to this post to start with.

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## tommage1 (Nov 6, 2008)

jmbach said:


> If you have the right link it will take you to a gihub page.
> 
> Let me see......
> 
> ...


Yeah, that link works. May want to check into the MFST 3.2 thread, see what's going on with the link there, either there is a problem or I am doing something wrong. Does seem the 3.34 -2 ISO is AMD only. I have Intel in main. But may have an AMD computer sitting around. Probably a good idea to use secondary computer anyway as full 4TB drive could take days  Thanks.


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## jmbach (Jan 1, 2009)

It works with Intel and AMD chips. 

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## tommage1 (Nov 6, 2008)

jmbach said:


> It works with Intel and AMD chips.
> 
> Sent from my SM-G998U using Tapatalk


Interesting, the download link page says the ISO for AMD64. And 32 bit Intel? However it seems to boot for my 64 bit Intel. Different, no more "root" "tivo" login, now have to type "sudo" before the command? All my MFST CDs are root/tivo, last was from Feb 2020.

Just FYI the link I had trouble with was post #1 in the MFST 3.2 thread. However post #1 is not your post so you probably can't change it. Can get confusing over time and download link locations change. Thanks for pointing me in right direction.

End of post #1, this is where I used to go to get MFST.

*"Attachment*
The iso image has been removed from sourceforge temporarily to address some of the issues reported in this thread regarding large drives.
Please go to sourceforge for the latest release."


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## jmbach (Jan 1, 2009)

tommage1 said:


> Interesting, the download link page says the ISO for AMD64. And 32 bit IBM? However it seems to boot for my 64 bit Intel. Different, no more "root" "tivo" login, now have to type "sudo" before the command? All my MFST CDs are root/tivo, last was from Feb 2020.
> 
> Just FYI the link I had trouble with was post #1 in the MFST 3.2 thread. However post #1 is not your post so you probably can't change it. Can get confusing over time and download link locations change. Thanks for pointing me in right direction.
> 
> ...


AMD64 is the same a x86-64 that Intel promotes. Depends on who you talk to, Intel licensed the AMD64 instruction set from AMD but did not want AMD on their chips so called it x86-64. Before AMD came out with AMD64, Intel came out with their Itanium 64 which was not compatible with the x86 instruction set. That prompted AMD to come out with AMD64 instruction set which is now the standard for the 64 bit architecture in the x86 line.

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## tommage1 (Nov 6, 2008)

Well my DDRescue project is complete. Not sure if anyone has interest but here is how it went and why I tried it in the first place.

1. Had a nearly full 4TB drive in my Roamio Plus. Wanted to copy/expand it to a larger drive. Started with a cloning dock, was then going to do add and addfixes. But the clone failed, of course since a dock no feedback. So tried MFSTools. Did not work, got errors. So checked the drive, had a couple reallocated sectors but also a pending and unmovable error. Drive still mostly worked in the Tivo so I set it aside so could watch recording whenever I wanted but not use as a main drive anymore. I wanted to try to copy it to a new drive so don't have to worry about failure later. Knew clone did not work (at least in dock) and MFSTools did not work. So decided to try DDRescue.

Did research. Decided to run off the MFST 3.42 -2 CD. With DDRescue it is recommended to create a logfile so can restart whenever you want. If you just let it create the logfile it will try to put it on one of the two drives being used (original and new). But since my original drive was/is full I found I could use a 3rd drive for the logfile. Since I was booting from CD could not write to that, I mounted a USB drive and created a folder for the logfile.

So started the rescue (after practicing with a couple smaller drives). I used -f -n -v parameters. The -n is supposed to keep it from doing too many heavy duty attempts to fix the original drive, since mine MOSTLY still worked in the Tivo I wanted to keep it intact in case the copy did not work. So the rescue started. Got a read error fairly quickly. And it showed "auto relocation" did not work for that error. I'm guessing that was the sector/block that my original crystal disk test showed as unmovable. Kept going, about 9 hours for pass 1. Showed only 5 read errors and no bad blocks sectors (which was strange). Showed 99.99% "rescued". So I COULD have stopped the process right there, had a copy of my original on a new drive though the 5 errors not fixed. But I let it go. It keep trying to fix that unmovable error. Got to pass 5. Read errors now up to over 100. Ran about 5 hours more. Then completed. And for the original drive showed original capacity 4TB, now zero.

So shut down and pulled the drives. I tested the new copy with crystal disk, all looked good, all blue. Then checked the original. Before it had some yellow caution warnings, the reallocated and the pending and unmovable. But now under reallocated it was red and disk showed as "bad" instead of just caution. Was a bit worried of course. So I put the new drive in the Tivo. Booted up fine, everything seems to still be there. Of course since DDRescue had not been able to fix some errors I assume the errors are on the new drive also, but I know the drive itself is good. Can see some of the errors, when looking at season passes (I have hundreds including wishlists) some show "corrupt, please delete". Perhaps some recordings corrupt also, will find out over time I guess. So as for the copy to a new drive, seems to have worked as well as I could hope.

This is interesting though. The original drive with the errors. Now shows red/bad in crystal disk. I put it in the Tivo for kicks. And it still seems to work amazingly enough.

What would I do differently? In same situation where original has errors (including an unmovable) but still mostly works I'd stop it after pass one. Which should be a copy but without all errors fixed. Which would save the original drive from being pounded on trying to fix something that cannot be fixed, that unmovable block/sector. Which would probably have avoided the disk being marked as bad. Or maybe just try a straight DDcopy. Since I really did not care that much about the errors being fixed, the drive still mostly worked, I just wanted a copy on a new drive to avoid future problems. Would that have worked, no idea, I suppose I could try a DDcopy with the original to another 4TB.


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## jmbach (Jan 1, 2009)

tommage1 said:


> Well my DDRescue project is complete. Not sure if anyone has interest but here is how it went and why I tried it in the first place.
> 
> 1. Had a nearly full 4TB drive in my Roamio Plus. Wanted to copy/expand it to a larger drive. Started with a cloning dock, was then going to do add and addfixes. But the clone failed, of course since a dock no feedback. So tried MFSTools. Did not work, got errors. So checked the drive, had a couple reallocated sectors but also a pending and unmovable error. Drive still mostly worked in the Tivo so I set it aside so could watch recording whenever I wanted but not use as a main drive anymore. I wanted to try to copy it to a new drive so don't have to worry about failure later. Knew clone did not work (at least in dock) and MFSTools did not work. So decided to try DDRescue.
> 
> ...


The drive is "bad" because of the number of sectors that are bad. All ddrescue did was show you that a little earlier than you would have normally and saved you from a catastrophic demise.

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