Disk Errors: Complete Format Recover outlook: 244 days

[Mike]

My laptop hard drive crashed a while back. I put the disk in a usb drive enclosure and am running RMF to recover files. I'm doing a Complete Format Recovery. When first started, it moves along quite quickly with the scan, then it slows down quite a bit. I suspect it is hitting some disk errors and gets hung on I/Os. (The drive has some serious problems. I avoid the My Computer window, because it just hangs forever.) RMF only responds (screen updates) once every few minutes.

Search Progress currently shows:
Files Found: 3351
O/S Items Found 235,630
Time Elapsed: 16:14:36

At the current rate, it would take 244 days to complete. I left this running previously for 7+ days over the holidays, and it got further, but still hundreds of days remaining.

My question is this. When I click on "Stop" button on the Search Progress window, it will stop doing something, and continue. What are the consequences of doing this? I find that the search continues on, and I am able to get to search results and restore files. Does clicking "Stop" cause fewer files to show up in the search results? Does clicking "Stop" affect the ability to save files that do show up in the search results?

Thanks,
Mike

[Mike]

More Info:

I have thousands of the following errors in the Event Log:
"Error: Error in processing * Driver at sector/cluster"
"Error reading sector : <number>" events

[GDH]

Hi Mike,

"Error reading sector : <number>" is a good indication that the drive has unreadable storage sectors and has serious physical problems. The drive is on the way out, and you should get everything you can off it as soon as possible.

Yes, you can stop the "Complete Format Recover" before the drive search is finished.

In the progress window, the entry for "OS Items Found = XX" indicates a file that has been found with its full file and folder structure. Recover My Files is using a table at the start of the disk called the Master File Table to find the Operating System records (OS Items) which point to the location of each file on the disk. As soon as the OS Items number reaches a decent size number, stop the search and see what you can get back.

Because an OS item is found, it does not necessarily mean that you will sucessfully recover the file. The OS item could point to a location on the disk which has bad sectors, so the file in that location may not be able to be read.

I suggest that when you try and save files, you save only a small number of files at a time (use the SHIFT or CTRL key to select groups of files and press the SPACE BAR to turn the selection ticks on and off). If you are trying to save a file from a bad sector, the save process will slow down and you should see it reported in the event log.

After you have done the above, the other thing that you can try is to sequentially search segments of the disk. To do this, click on the OPTIONS buttons on the main program screen and in the "Advanced Tab" put a tick in the box for "Allow searching of physical drives". Now run a "Complete File Search" of the "physical drive" for specific file types. You should get prompted for the starting cluster number. You can use this to test different parts of the disk - RMF will sequentially scan from the starting location looking for the specific file types by their unique header and footer. This search will not recover the original file names (as these are stored only in the Master File Table) but you will be able to preview the files found in the search results window.

Good luck.