Trying to rescue a hard disk -- weired feedback??
William Case
billlinux at rogers.com
Mon Jan 14 05:08:48 UTC 2008
Thanks to everyone:
On Mon, 2008-01-14 at 07:42 +0900, John Summerfield wrote:
> William Case wrote:
> > Hi;
> >
> > I have a hard disk that seems broken but I am trying to save -- or at
> > least save the data on it.
> >
> > The broken hard disk is a dual boot SCSI disk that worked.
> > * BIOS says that the disk is present and accounted for i.e. right
> > name and size even after swapping in and out other harddisks.
>
> Means the electrical and electronic bits appear to work. I don't know
> that the motor has to spin up for this to pass.
>
>
> > * Using Fedora rescue disk, parted /dev/sda says can't read sda.
> > * Using Fedora rescue disk, fdisk /dev/sda says can't read sda.
> > * Using Fedora rescue disk, chroot /mnt/sysimage can't mount
> > sysimage.
>
> That's one test three times. No surprise that, when the first fails the
> others do too. It's likely to be a catastrophic such as motor speed not
> up to par, rw head don't move (I'm only speculating, I presume these
> things can happen).
On one hand I think it is a busted, broken, dead disk, on the other hand
it was working just recently and the data seems tantalizingly close.
>
> > * fdisk /mbr says can't fix mbr. ( I am not sure whether this
> > message means that nothing is wrong with the mbr or that it is
> > beyond repair )
>
> I didn't think fdisk on Fedora supported such a thing.
>
It doesn't, but this disk was used to dual boot Fedora and WindowsXP.
Thought I would see if rebuilding the mbr for/to the Windows partition
would help find the various partitions.
>
> >
> > I would like to do any of the following:
> > * get the hard disk working again, or,
> > * view the data on the disk, and/or,
> > * rescue the data on the disk.
> >
> > What should I try next?
>
> 1. Try knoppix. I am not optimistic though.
> 2. Engage expensive data recovery experts.
>
> I think the disk is bin-fodder.
Could very well be. It is a friend's hard disk, not mine.
We have swapped disks in and out of two machines, tried so many
permutations and combinations of disks, operating systems and roots that
I have completely lost track by late tonight. I am going to leave it
until morning; start fresh and if I don't make any progress within a
couple of hours then, quit.
Thanks for the suggestions and help
--
Regards Bill
More information about the fedora-list
mailing list