ddrescue mapfile and logfile location?

http://www.gnu.org/software/ddrescue...ue_manual.html

I am wondering about the 'mapfile'
What does it contain and where does it get written?
Can you specify a location or is it hardcoded.

And what about 'ddrescuelog -d mapfile'
What does this tell you about unrecoverable file names?
Anyone with experience reading the mapfile ddrescue creates?

Originally Posted by sdowney717 What does it contain

That's written here: http://www.gnu.org/software/ddrescue...file-structure

Originally Posted by sdowney717 and where does it get written? Can you specify a location or is it hardcoded.

Yes, you may specify a location.

Originally Posted by sdowney717 And what about 'ddrescuelog -d mapfile' What does this tell you about unrecoverable file names?

"--delete-if-done" deletes the map file if all the blocks in the rescue domain have been successfully recovered. The manual typically says nothing about file names being recoverable or not because they most often aren't. Ask yourself if valuing recoverable file names over recoverable file contents is worth the time and effort.

Originally Posted by sdowney717 Anyone with experience reading the mapfile ddrescue creates?

At http://www.gnu.org/software/ddrescue...file-structure it says its plain text and the contents are described. What is your specific question?

What is your specific question?

Curiosity, another poster on windows7 forums has recovered his win7 boot drive by writing to a new drive using ddrescue.
He made the comment that some 'recovery.log' file he would like to read but cant find it anywhere?
I am assuming the mapfile he named 'recovery.log'
So was trying to help him out.

http://www.sevenforums.com/general-d...ecovery-3.html

I dont have the experience of using ddrescue, so maybe you could help them out, ddrescue is getting a lot of positive acclaim there.

nkaufman fixed his drive.

Originally Posted by sdowney717 He made the comment that some 'recovery.log' file he would like to read but cant find it anywhere?

Sorry, was away. In post #27 he gave his command line as

ddrescue -r3 -n -v /dev/sdb /dev/sdc recovery.log

so "recovery.log" will be in the current working directory where he started the process. Note working from a LiveCD / Flash drive isn't a problem as long as you save the log file to a permanent location when you pause or before you reboot.

Originally Posted by sdowney717 http://www.gnu.org/software/ddrescue...ue_manual.html I am wondering about the 'mapfile' What does it contain and where does it get written? Can you specify a location or is it hardcoded. And what about 'ddrescuelog -d mapfile' What does this tell you about unrecoverable file names? Anyone with experience reading the mapfile ddrescue creates?

You can open the map file in a text editor and see by yourself. It contains lines with sector ranges and the information whether it has been read succesfully or not or whether it's still pending. It saves that file where you tell it to save it. If you don't specify a path than it will be the current directory. If you boot from a live cd it might be lost after a reboot.

ddrescue doesn't know anything about filenames. It doesn't care about filesystems as it reads sectors from a device and writes it to another device or file..

You can also open the mapfile in ddrescue-view, a GUI that shows you a map of the disk with bad, good, etc... mapped out like many Windows defrag programs have.