Re: [PLUG] OT - data recovery service?

[Julien Mills <julienfmills@yahoo.com>]

Brent,

> if you can see the drive show up in /dev on a livecd (i
> recommend System
> Rescue CD- www.sysresccd.org), you can give this a shot
> yourself- you'll
> need a usb chassis for it (i'm guessing it's a
> 3.5" laptop IDE) and
> probably an appropriate converter.
> 
> rule number one is always work with an image of the drive
> so the first
> thing you want to do is get one. dd doesn't like
> certain errors and will
> crap out the second it hits a bad sector. that's why
> you'll want to use
> GNU ddrescue
> (http://www.gnu.org/software/ddrescue/ddrescue.html should
> be in your repos). not to be confused with dd_rescue;
> ddrescue is a
> rewrite of the latter that works a bit better.
> 
> mount that image (might need to chkdsk it.. i BELIEVE
> hiren's bootcd
> should have an MS chkdsk). you can also try ntfs fix on the
> image if
> needed but chkdsk is considered the superior option there,
> as ntfsfix
> pretty much only fixes some inconsistencies and scrubs the
> journal (and
> marks the partition as needing a chkdsk. this is all kind
> of irrelevant
> since we're dealing with an image and not physical
> media, but i digress).
> 
> ANYWAYS. you can then mount that image and get the date
> from it.
> 
> this is all still working under the premise, of course,
> that you're only
> dealing with a couple bad blocks where some key system
> files.might be.
> another thing that may have happened is the partition table
> was
> corrupted; gpart is usually pretty good with fixing this.
> lastly, another possibility is the MBR got massed up (not
> too uncommon)-
> fixmbr etc. should help with that (pretty common thing,
> check google).
> 
> if it's actual electronics or mechanical failure,
> you'll want to send it
> to a place like OnTrack in New Jersey.

Agreed, this is great advice, thanks for the info.

Julien 


      
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