PC-3000 Forum

When I scan a drive completely I'm left with some black and red sectors that are present in the submap. I want to keep scanning those in hopes to get data but Data extractor does not scan them anymore for some reason.
I highlight all the selected chains after creating a submap and tell it to scan them again but it immediately says "completed" without scanning anything (even if I set extremely high retries).

All checks to skip errors have been removed. Why can't I re-scan the sectors with errors?

You have to clear the map and check the colored boxes you want cleared. It'll only retry yellow or white boxes.

Data Medics, thanks for the reply although I think your answer is incorrect.
There is no re-try of white sectors because those haven't even been tried yet. I'm pretty sure those are the unprocessed ones and will be read by default. Yellow sectors are skipped sectors so those have not really been processed either.
For some reason the PC3K is now retrying my black and red sectors that I had filtered in using the submap feature... it was not doing this before even with high retries.... and I have not changed anything. Odd.

I did not have to clear any map. (im also not clear on the benefits of clearing maps or chains either).

Hello osity,

Try to uncheck 'Skip sectors at loss of readness' flag in DE parameters, cloning tab

osity wrote:Source of the post Data Medics, thanks for the reply although I think your answer is incorrect.
There is no re-try of white sectors because those haven't even been tried yet. I'm pretty sure those are the unprocessed ones and will be read by default. Yellow sectors are skipped sectors so those have not really been processed either.
For some reason the PC3K is now retrying my black and red sectors that I had filtered in using the submap feature... it was not doing this before even with high retries.... and I have not changed anything. Odd.

I did not have to clear any map. (im also not clear on the benefits of clearing maps or chains either).

If you clear the map, it marks them as "untried" once again, so it will then re-try reading them. I only do this about 10 times a day though, so what do I know.

Now, if you're referring to having it retry say 5 times all at once that's different (and ill-advised in my opinion). Only time I ever use that feature is with Toshiba drives and certain older drives with weak heads. Usually though if it's timing out after 500ms on a modern drive, it's never going to read. However to get it to do this you need to set the timeout high enough for it to do the desired number of retries. It'll never retry a red timeout sector, only a black read error sector. So you might need to set the timeout to something like 5000ms for it to ever even bother retrying the sector, otherwise it'll hit the timeout number and move on.

However in any event, if the sectors are already marked as red or black (as you said they are) then the only way it'll ever retry the sectors is to clear the map as I originally posted telling you to do.

However in any event, if the sectors are already marked as red or black (as you said they are) then the only way it'll ever retry the sectors is to clear the map as I originally posted telling you to do.

The system will retry the red and black sectors if you filter them using the submap and set your "reading retries parameter" to a specific number. I did this all day without clearing any maps.
Since my pc3k is now behaving as expected and finally retrying the black and red sectors I don't see the benefit of clearing the red and black in order to re-read them..... why not just filter them? When you clear them do they turn blue (modified)? I think we approach the PC3K quite differently based on your comments, particularly about never retrying red sectors. Red sectors are either drive timeouts or sector timeouts but either way both are very readable and you should be able to get a more accurate results by changing read times ....until they turn black, so I don't think you should be giving up on the red.... Black is where the challenge is....Correct me if I'm wrong.

Usually though if it's timing out after 500ms on a modern drive, it's never going to read.

I read sectors that time out far higher than 500ms.(although i don't see the actual ms on the PC3K, only on my other equipment) I would think you should be able to read all red sectors to the point where they turn black, and after that there's still lots more to do....

What do you mean by "you're referring to having it retry say 5 times all at once that's different" ?

Never said I gave up on the red sectors, I just hit the "clear map" button and they turn white again (not blue as you mistakenly suggest). Why do you even bother asking questions on a forum and then stubbornly refuse to listen.

Why do you even bother asking questions on a forum and then stubbornly refuse to listen.

It's not stubbornness. You put forward some absolute statements about the pc3k that were a bit limiting and factually incorrect that's all.
The solution was likely Dmitriy_TS suggestion of a check box ....or a glitch.
That last question I posed was directed at you also.

When I'm imaging cases I never do multiple retries of the same sector all at once. Better to do multiple complete passes trying each sector just once at increasing timeouts. Trying to read a bad sector a bunch of times drastically increases the likelihood that the heads will fail prematurely, possibly leaving behind other sectors that otherwise could have been read without changing them. That's why most guys I know just simply run the imaging at a low timeout, clear map, increase timeout, image again, and repeat.

The only times I've found doing multiple re-tries all at once to be useful is the occasional old drive or Toshiba that needs to be read using a software translator because of G-list damage.

hmmmm, interesting..... I have had success with retries when there is literally one black located in the MFT. ( ...after i had imaged all the other files based on current MFT results) In that case I created a submap of only black sectors and set the retry 40 times. (And only because the client said something was missing) It was finally read when it reached the mid 30th retry.....and it revealed a directory with hundreds of more files....

There was certainly some risk of having to replace a head but all was solved in seconds rather than having to image the whole drive and do a logical...not for the faint of heart.
I will check out the 'clearing map' feature... one time I 'cleared selected chains' and they all turned blue...that was quite annoying to figure out how to reverese.. I believe my original intention that day was to try 'clear map' instead.

A quick scan with R-Studio against the clone would have found the folder if you imaged the whole drive. I'm not saying you should never do it, there certainly are circumstances. But, it's not my go-to option. More of a last ditch effort when you really need a certain sector because it belongs to that really important database file option.