DDRescue cannot be trusted?

[wallstreet]

I managed to save almost 100% of the data, just few KB of data was errored out. (from beginning it was 5GB) but due to trimming failed blocks after the cloning was done it managed to pull out almost all of that data being errored as well.

Now when I checked my harddrive, I only found 2GB of pictures, word documents and so on and so on. Im not sure but this guy im helping out said his little brother might have formatted the drive or filled it with files and made defrag on it. Would this if so be a good explanation of why only 2GB of data was being recovered?

Or is it simply as that DDRescue cannot be trusted when it comes to the ERROR count? The scan showed 72 sectors were bad.... but that shouldnt affect it right, since it was able to recover all sectors besides few KB?

[thatdellguy]

Use DE, DC, or DDI if you don't trust your imager.

[Eleg]

You need to know exactly what happened. And then apply basic understanding of filesystems.

If files were just added and defrag was run before HDD died, lots of original data should be found.

If disk was formatted, files added, and finally a defrag was run, chances are that many original files and control structure elements are overwritten. A "raw" recovery is possibly the only way to see any results.

[wallstreet]

Eleg, yeh mate you right. Actually this harddrive was filled with files and then defrag was ran in order to wipe off all the information after a format. He made a mistake doing this procedure when he shouldnt have had, them 2 had some misscommunication of which hdd to clean and re-use. I just got this information now, and it fits very well with what you just said.

I did a "raw" recovery and the result was barely 2gb of data that was recovered.