8 Saving the mapfile in case of trouble

The mapfile is an essential part of ddrescue’s effectiveness. Without a mapfile, ddrescue can’t resume a rescue, only reinitiate it. Given that a difficult rescue may take days to complete, it would be a serious drawback if the mapfile were lost because of a solvable problem like a lack of space on the device the mapfile is written to.

In case of trouble writing the mapfile, ddrescue will print a message like this:

Error writing mapfile 'mapfile': No space left on device
Fix the problem and press ENTER to retry,
                     or E+ENTER for an emergency save and exit,
                     or Q+ENTER to abort.

You may try to fix the problem, for example deleting some files to make room for the mapfile, and press Return to retry.

If the problem can’t be fixed, you may press e followed by Return to try an emergency save and exit. Ddrescue will try to write the mapfile to the file ddrescue.map in the current directory or, if this fails, to $HOME/ddrescue.map. If the mapfile is written successfully, ddrescue will exit with status 1. Else it will print the above message again.

Or you may press q followed by Return to quit and exit with status 1. In this case the contents of the mapfile will be lost.