How long should this take?

[Rich5]

I have Zar running for more than 82 hours, trying to recover files from a 111M ext2 partition. It says it's located 157 files in 9 directories and the CPU useage varies between 0.0 and 4.0%.

The "Current operation and its progress" indicator is blank.

This on a P3 with 512M of RAM, running W2K, with only essential processes running.

The drive ( a Western Digital WD1200) doesn't have any physical damage (it passes a surface test) but has a corrupt partition table.

Just wondering how much longer before the "Next" button becomes available.

Thanks,
Rich

[Alexey V. Gubin]

We're investigating a similar occurrence right now. It seems that ZAR gets stuck in some sort of noise, resulting in excessive processing time. We expect to have a fix in a couple of days.

82 hours is excessive. Normal run is typically at a rate of 1GB per minute (less than two hours for your setup).

[Rich5]

Thanks for the response. Should I kill it or is there some chance it'll sort things out on its own? If it's any help, this is the third time it's done this, but the longest I've let it run. Is there any other info I can provide?

Rich

[csherman1]

Hello Alexey. I too am having the same issue. I have a Maxtor Personal Storage 3200 (200GB) USB drive that I let run over night. When I went to bed, it was at 77% and in the midst of a string of "Red" boxes about 10 or so long. When I awoke this morning, it was in the same state. The computer was NOT frozen though -- only the process of ZAR seemed to be stuck, however it was responsive so I could simply stop the scan without problems. Please advise as my life is on this drive and I am desperate. Thank you very much.
Craig

[Alexey V. Gubin]

Originally Posted by Rich5

Thanks for the response. Should I kill it or is there some chance it'll sort things out on its own? If it's any help, this is the third time it's done this, but the longest I've let it run. Is there any other info I can provide?

Rich

Kill it. No way it will recover on its own. As for info, we have the drive with most likely the same problem quite close, and at this point we have all we need already.

[Alexey V. Gubin]

Originally Posted by csherman1

Hello Alexey. I too am having the same issue. I have a Maxtor Personal Storage 3200 (200GB) USB drive that I let run over night. ... in the midst of a string of "Red" boxes about 10 or so long. Craig

This indicates the part of the disk is unreadable. "Red" box is displayed every time ZAR gets a read error from the device. Which means you have a physical problem somewhere.

If it is a drive problem, there is nothing we can do with it in software.
If it is the USB-to-IDE bridge problem (in the enclosure), then a solution would be to disassemble the device and attach the drive to the motherboard port. However, since I do not have one here, I cannot advise on the specifics. Additionally, this obviously voids your warranty.

The "heavy" solution would be to send it to the data recovery service (in which case I'd recommend DriveSavers as outlined here; scroll to the bottom of page), but that comes at quite a price.

[csherman1]

Alexey,

If the drive has gone bad, isn't there a way to retrieve some of the data with ZAR? Even the sectors that aren't showing as bad? Like I said -- my life is on this thing and I can't afford to send it out and spend hundreds or more, so maybe I can use software to get some of it? PLEASE advise...

[Alexey V. Gubin]

ZAR uses all-or-nothing method. So, if the scan does not complete, the recovery is not possible. This is a design limitation, which we cannot work around without rewriting the entire program.

Hence, the options are

1. If practical, disassemble the device, attach directly to mainboard, as mentioned earlier; hoping that it at least reduces the scale of the problem.
2. Configure ZAR to improve speed on a defective drive, as described here - http://www.z-a-recovery.com/man-runtime-control.htm, refer to section "Recommended settings" - "drive with bad sectors".

Check this if provides enough boost to complete within reasonable time.

[Alexey V. Gubin]

Originally Posted by Alexey V. Gubin

we have the drive with most likely the same problem quite close, and at this point we have all we need already.

we have something available now

1. download http://www.z-a-recovery.com/tt/zar-82-012.exe
2. rename to ZAR.EXE and save over the original executable into C:\Program Files\ZAR
3. in Advanced Configuration, set Logging to "Extended logging (debug)"
4. restart from scratch. full rescan is needed
5. in case you suspect it hung, check if the log file grows and/or CPU usage is close to 100%.
6. Expect about two hours run time. If longer and no progress, do not kill but report here.

please report back with the results

[Rich5]

Thanks!

Started the process again at 09:58 MST. We'll see...