Trying to rescue a hard disk -- weired feedback??

[R. G. Newbury]

On Mon, 2008-01-14 at 07:42 +0900, John Summerfield wrote:
 > > William Case wrote
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 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.

I would guess that if the disk still starts up and rotates, then it is 
now toast. But if it does not spin up, you *might* be able to get it to 
start by leaving it in the fridge/freeze overnight.

That tip has been posted here or elsewhere before. Apparently, the 
bearings get sticky, and cooling it down gets it 'unstuck' just enough 
to overcome the startup inertia. Once you get it spinning, do not let it 
stop as this trick is a one-timer apparently...