I am cloning a Seagate ST37500630AS firmware SD46 using ddrescue.

It is clicking pretty hard every second all day all night like "click click"...."click click"..."click click...etc.

It has been going for 2 days without errors though. 40Gb recovered so far. From my calculations it will take 37 days to do the whole thing.

Has anyone encountered such a thing?

My other question is...let's say there's 100Gb of data on the drive...is it safe to assume I can stop after say 120gb has transferred and run it through GetDataBack with good results? Basically what I'm asking is...does data compile from beginning to end or is it spread out over the entire disk?

No. Use selective imaging.

huh? I don't think ddrescue has that. That sounds like something specialized hardware/software would have.

It can die much earlier.

Yes we see it every day but - sadly - there are workarounds.
As you don't know the organization of data on the drive and unless you have a complete map of the filessystem, you need full clone. Otherwise you need to know exactly where the needed data is.

So I ran ddrescue till 50Gb and manually stopped. Checked the data with GetDataBack and I didn't find what I was looking for.

The I restarted ddrescue from 50Gb and it ran till 100Gb. Checked data and still not what I was looking for.

Ran ddrescue 1 more time till 130Gb and BINGO - got what I was looking for.

My question is why GetDataBack is showing 380Gb of data? I see the normal file structure and then there are hundreds of folders that look like this...[98fefer9fh]

So...how did GetDataBack manage to find 380Gb of data when only 130Gb was scanned? fyi I ran GetDataBack on the image on a brand new drive.

What you find is information that references around 380GB of data, it does not actually contain 380GB. Much of the information you see referenced will actually exist on sectors not yet read...

hmmm. I copied everything that GetDataBack found into a folder on a different drive and I checked the properties of that folder. It was in fact 380Gb.

I realize 300Gb is probably invalid data, but it just seems strange why it would do that. It should be smart enough not to. Oh well.

Did you check the data you need to verify it is actually good data? You have to assume with a partial image you only have a partial data recovery...

Well,
One small Addition i would like here is that whenever you do something like this make sure a fan blows air directly to the hdd to keep it cool .It can work and get the job done .Ists good you Got What you Liked .Its Showing More Data Cos It Has Found MFT Structures That Says There is 380 GB of Data ,But everything After 130Gb would be invalid

_________________
Regards
Amarbir S Dhillon , Chandigarh Data Recovery Labs [India]
Logical,Semi Physical And Physical Data Recovery
Website-> http://www.chandigarhdatarecovery.com