[Info-vax] Backup A Dying Disk.

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2015-03-17 17:20:13 +0000, wa2flq said:

> I have RD54 disk that that whose entropy is rising. Someone who doesn't 
> have a backup asked me to save what I can before it dies completely.  I 
> realize its probably a goner, but I want to give it a shot.

Why?  If you know of specific directories, grab them and run.  Don't 
bother with the whole disk.

> I can mount the drive read only with error logging turned off, but 
> trying to do a backup is painfully slow.  Between the high number of 
> defects and read retries, it is taking forever.   Is there a way to 
> turn down or suppress the number of retries so I can grab the readable 
> content?  Or is there another utility that can be used to grab an image 
> (good and bad bits) from the drive ?  Its a MicroVAX II running VMS 
> 5.5-2 (booted on a good drive).

Slow?  It's a MicroVAX II.  Those things are glacial.

If you don't know what's on the disk, then let BACKUP run to 
completion, and for as long as it takes.

The more that disk is accessed including by BACKUP, the more times 
BACKUP is restarted, ^Y and all the rest, the more sectors disappear 
forever.


-- 
Pure Personal Opinion | HoffmanLabs LLC