Re: [PLUG] Hard drive crash - recovery

[eric@lucii.dnsalias.org]

Quoting "Michael D. Barlow" <mdbarlow@comcast.net>:

> On Wed,  8 Sep 2004 19:14:30 -0400, <eric@lucii.dnsalias.org> wrote:
> 
> > Fellow Pluggers, I got hammered yesterday morning by the inevitable
> > hard disk failure :-(
> >
> > My mail backup is about 6 weeks old, my documents backup is
> > similar... but everything else is, apparently, gone.
> > Based on the error message it appears to be a hardware failure.
> >
> 	Are the input output errors that you mention later on in this post, the  
> same error messages that indicate a hardware failure...

Not exactly.  When I run reiserfsck on the drive - that's when they
explicitly mention hardware.  I'm not sure if it's hardware or not.
That's why I'm looking for tools and or HOWTOs that give me the info
I need to diagnose and repair/recover.
 
> Are there any other clues that signify a hardware failure.  (Tick of  
> death),,  No boot device found,, godawful whining noise,

I know the sounds what of you speak... this drive appears quiet
Can be booted from.  Partitions appear in fdisk so it's not 
turned to metal shavings internally.
 
> We know the drive is spinning.

Yes, agreed.
 
> This drive could be the fabled candidate for the freezer trick or  
> controller swap..  If the data is worth the cost of another drive, and you 
> can find that same drive, give it a shot.  You need a new drive anyway.

I don't have another similar drive but I'll look for one.  Perhaps e-bay.  
At the risk of starting a flame war, this is my first Seagate... 
I've always been a Maxtor user and had *very* few complaints with them.
 
> At the cost of being redundant.  This topic comes up quite often on this  
> list.

True!  I have (had) thousands of emails archived in ~/Mail/old/PLUG
and if I could just get this drive to work I could read them :-P
 
> Again no clue about data recovery.  I am just a bare bones hardware guy.

Thanks for your suggestions.  Perhaps I'll try the freezer trick since it
cannot hurt (to the best of my knowledge.)  

What I'm hoping is somebody will say:
  "You dummy!  Don't you know that everybody uses the reiser-master 
   to repair their damaged systems.  go to www.reiser-master.whatever 
   and download it!!"
I just have not found the tools and/or information yet although I continue
to "google" for info.

It's so infrequent that I have to do this kind of stuff (last time
was 1998) that I have no opportunity to develop any expertise.  
Perhaps that's a good thing?
 
> Peace

Indeed... Peace to you too!  Such a rare commodity.

Eric

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