JP Vossen on 6 Jul 2007 04:29:50 -0000


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[PLUG] hard drive recovery services?

Short version: does anyone have any thoughts/recommendations on "send it out to the clean-room" hard drive recovery services (e.g. On-track)?

Long version:
A neighbor has a hard drive that died suddenly and he'd like to recover
some of the data. (Don't even ask about backups.) I got my hands on the drive and its behavior is--odd. My theory is that the drive's electronics suffered a component failure somewhere in the data path between the drive firmware and hardware. It was apparently working at 9:30 AM and just dead by 11:30 AM, with no known issues (no storm, etc.) and no previous warning signs.

When I installed it as the only drive (IDE master), the test PC (Dell PE 350) BIOS didn't see the drive at all. So I threw in another drive and set it to master and the failed drive to slave. Then the PC BIOS could see the failed drive. As far as I can tell, the platters spin up fine.

So I booted up Ubuntu and started poking around. fdisk can see /dev/hda (good) but not /dev/hdb (failed). Yet, /proc/ide/hdb is populated [1]. Yet, dd has been running for 14,000+ seconds and has copied 0 bytes (dd if=/dev/hdb of=/mnt/good/image.dd conv=noerror).

I plan to let dd run overnight then try the freezer trick, just in case.

But unless that changes things, it seems to me that SpinRite, or recover2000.com or whatever other home-use software solutions (as suggested by another list) won't help, since I can't even dd the raw data... Anyone disagree?


So the only other option is one of the bazillion services e.g. at http://www.google.com/search?q=drive+recovery+services.

So any thoughts/recommendations on these? This is a home user looking to recover only 1-2 folders worth of data. No pics, mp3, or anything else, just some data, and money is a concern.

________________________

[1] /proc/ide/hdb/*
==> /proc/ide/hdb/cache <==
2048

==> /proc/ide/hdb/capacity <==
80293332

==> /proc/ide/hdb/driver <==
ide-disk version 1.18

==> /proc/ide/hdb/geometry <==
physical     16383/16/63
logical      16383/255/63

==> /proc/ide/hdb/identify <==
0040 3fff c837 0010 0000 0000 003f 0000
0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
0000 0000 0000 0000 0003 1000 0039 4e41
5236 3135 395a 4d61 7874 6f72 204e 3430
5020 2020 2020 2020 2020 0000 0000 0000
0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 8010
0000 2f00 4000 0200 0000 0007 3fff 0010
003f fc10 00fb 0100 2dd4 04c9 0000 0407
0003 0078 0078 0078 0078 0000 0000 0000
0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
00fe 001e 7c69 7f09 4003 7c68 3c01 4003
007f 0000 0000 0000 0000 6b00 c000 0000
0000 0000 0000 0000 2dd4 04c9 0000 0000
0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0001 0000
0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 74a5

==> /proc/ide/hdb/media <==
disk

==> /proc/ide/hdb/model <==
Maxtor N40P

==> /proc/ide/hdb/settings <==
name                 value          min        max        mode
----                 -----          ---        ---        ----
acoustic              0             0          254        rw
address               1             0          2          rw
bios_cyl              16383         0          65535      rw
bios_head             255           0          255        rw
bios_sect             63            0          63         rw
bswap                 0             0          1          r
current_speed         0             0          70         rw
failures              0             0          65535      rw
init_speed            0             0          70         rw
io_32bit              0             0          3          rw
keepsettings          0             0          1          rw
lun                   0             0          7          rw
max_failures          1             0          65535      rw
multcount             0             0          16         rw
nice1                 1             0          1          rw
nowerr                0             0          1          rw
number                1             0          3          rw
pio_mode              write-only    0          255        w
unmaskirq             0             0          1          rw
using_dma             0             0          1          rw
wcache                1             0          1          rw

==> /proc/ide/hdb/smart_thresholds <==

==> /proc/ide/hdb/smart_values <==

---- cut here ----


Thanks,
JP
----------------------------|:::======|-------------------------------
JP Vossen, CISSP            |:::======|        jp{at}jpsdomain{dot}org
My Account, My Opinions     |=========|      http://www.jpsdomain.org/
----------------------------|=========|-------------------------------
Microsoft has single-handedly nullified Moore's Law.
Innate design flaws of Windows make a personal firewall, anti-virus
and anti-malware software mandatory. The resulting software arms race
has effectively flattened Moore's Law on hardware running Windows.

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