[linux-lvm] Attempting to salvage data from a PV on a damaged disk

[John Drescher]

>> The system would not boot from the "live disk" due to what appears to be a
>> minor (but not minor enough) disk failure (SMART and other tests pass, but I
>> get some I/O errors before operations work).
>
> What filesystem is on the disk? Maybe you could try something like spinrite?
> I have used it successfully countless times with drives that have developed
> some bad sectors but are otherwise ok...
>

I also recommend ddrescue for this task.

http://www.forensicswiki.org/wiki/Ddrescue

It will first copy around problem areas of the disk then it will try
to recover the sectors around the problem. This is assuming the
problem with the disk is unreadable sectors.

SMART id # 197 and 198.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T.

John