Do I need to format/partition ddrescue destination drive?

Solution 1:

No. ddrescue will prepare everything for you. You just need to setup things after the rescue, but only if the partition table was damaged. From GNU ddrescue Manual:

Example 1: Fully automatic rescue of a whole disc with two ext2 partitions in /dev/sda to /dev/sdb.

Note: you don't need to partition /dev/sdb beforehand, but if the partition table on /dev/sda is damaged, you'll need to recreate it somehow on /dev/sdb.

 ddrescue -f -r3 /dev/sda /dev/sdb mapfile
 fdisk /dev/sdb
 e2fsck -v -f /dev/sdb1
 e2fsck -v -f /dev/sdb2

After ddrescue is done (and you have done everything safely, for example not having mounted any of /dev/sda or /dev/sdb during the rescue, be careful with interruptions and "repairing" the failing drive), you will see that all possible data from the failing disc was copied to the new one. Saying "all possible data" I mean also the partition table and partition flags.