hard disk crash

[bryan at redfedora.co.uk]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "linux r" <linuxr at gmail.com>
To: "For users of Fedora Core releases" <fedora-list at redhat.com>
Sent: Wednesday, October 27, 2004 7:27 PM
Subject: Re: hard disk crash


> On Wed, 27 Oct 2004 17:51:06 +0100, James Wilkinson
> <james at westexe.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>> Emiliano Brunetti wrote:
>> > I am running FC1 and one of my hdd crashed: i can't even mount it.
>>
>> "linux r" suggested:
>> > 3.  dd it to another removable device, preferably another (USB
>> > external) hard drive so that you don't run into weird geometry issues
>> > or other time consuming things.
>> >
>> Emiliano replied:
>> > I never really used dd. After i copy the whole partition to another
>> > hopefully healthy drive, can't i just zap everything away from the old
>> > damaged drive and format it? I just wish i could save some of the data.
>> >
>> > Is this correct?
>>
>> Once you've made *sure* you've got everything you can.
>>
>> You should be in paranoia mode here. Your data may be there, or it may
>> not. Keep as many copies as you can: the last thing you want to do is to
>> mess up a command and lose your "good" copy.
>>
>> Incidentally, one of the easiest commands to mess up is dd: make sure
>> you get the if= and the of= devices right. It's too common for someone
>> to get one of these wrong (or put the of device against if= and vice
>> versa), and copy over something they really wanted to keep.
>>
>> I wouldn't do anything to that hard drive until you're happy you've got
>> everything into its new home and properly backed up.
>>
>> And I wouldn't fully trust it, even then.
>>
>> Hope this helps,
>>
>> James.
>>
>> --
>> E-mail address: james | I suppose if one has to go mad, slowly is the way 
>> to
>> @westexe.demon.co.uk  | go. You wouldn't want to rush going mad, you 
>> might
>>                       | miss some of the good bits.
>>                       |     -- Paul Tomblin
>>
>> --
>>
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>
> To make it faster, can you just do just _part_ of the directory tree
> with dd?  E.g., not do a 70 g  partition of / when you can maybe scrap
> your apps and just dd /home or something like that.  Later you can
> remount /home over your fresh install, or mount it in /tmp and cp over
> what you need.  I would think that you could get by a lot quicker that
> way.  Unless of course we are talking about a production box or
> something like that.  If you don't need to save log files, etc. then
> this may be a way to cut down the territory considerably.
>
> Marc
>

I was reading about dd_rescue http://www.garloff.de/kurt/linux/ddrescue/ 
when I was faced with a dilema copying from one drive to another recently, 
fortunately I got away with gnu parted and copied them across and then 
reworked it from there. I had multiple attempts with a redundant disk before 
finally commiting so it's well worth doing the research to get it right with 
a disk that doesn't matter until you get the right solution. Especially when 
you look at the prices of disks these days.

Hope you can recue your data.

Bry