[PANTUGGeneral] hard drive recovery services?
JP Vossen
the data. I haven't seen it yet, so I can't say how bad it is, but it's
possible that it's so dead that a PC won't even recognize it.
I will try all the usual tricks (e.g. freezer) when I get my hands on
it, but failing that, what do you recommend for drive recovery services?
There are a mere 16 million Google hits
(http://www.google.com/search?q=drive+recovery+services), but out of the
first 30 hits the only one which I actually recognized was
http://www.ontrack.com/.
In case it matters, it is/was a stock Dell XP install.
Recommendations? Thanks,
JP
PS--I did point him at http://mozy.com/ for the future. They look very
impressive in the home/Windows end-user context. I like the idea of
http://rsync.net/ better due to their open standards and flexibility,
but it looks like Mozy has them beat hands-down for 2G free and end-user
simplicity.
PPS--Ironically, my EIDE *RAID* controller flaked out and ate my main
server a couple of weekends ago. OOPS! I had backups and recovery was
fine, though I took the opportunity to migrate from Red Hat 8 (yeah, I
know...) to Debian Etch; and to newer, bigger drives, which complicated
matters some.
----------------------------|:::======|-------------------------------
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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Jeremy Fountain
Steve Gibson @ GRC
http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm
On Wed Jul 04 23:20:21 PDT 2007, JP Vossen <j...@jpsdomain.org>
wrote:
Buce, Michael (IT)
that.
http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm
Recommendations? Thanks,
JP
--------------------------------------------------------
NOTICE: If received in error, please destroy and notify sender. Sender does not intend to waive confidentiality or privilege. Use of this email is prohibited when received in error.
Buce, Michael (IT)
that.
-----Original Message-----
From: dle...@pantug.org [mailto:dle...@pantug.org] On Behalf Of Jeremy
Fountain
Sent: Thursday, July 05, 2007 8:24 AM
To: PANTUG...@pantug.org
Subject: Re: [PANTUGGeneral] hard drive recovery services?
http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm
Recommendations? Thanks,
JP
--------------------------------------------------------
NOTICE: If received in error, please destroy and notify sender. Sender does not intend to waive confidentiality or privilege. Use of this email is prohibited when received in error.
Jeremy Fountain
JP Vossen
> Also take a look at Recover2000.com, we have had a lot of luck with
> that.
>
> Assuming it will spin up at all, I'd start with SpinRite from
> Steve Gibson @ GRC
>
> http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm
Thanks. I'd forgotten about SpinRite, which was a life saver in the
early to mid 90's. Depending on how it goes, I will check into both of
those.
But I was asking more about the "send it to the clean-room" services
line On-track. Any thoughts/suggestions there?
Thanks,
JP
JP Vossen
> A neighbor has a hard drive that died suddenly and he'd like to recover
> the data. I haven't seen it yet, so I can't say how bad it is, but it's
> possible that it's so dead that a PC won't even recognize it.
Update: I got my hands on it. It's--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 won't
help, since I can't even dd the raw data... Anyone disagree?
Any other ideas? 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
Troy Sorzano
________________________________
From: dle...@pantug.org on behalf of JP Vossen
Sent: Fri 7/6/2007 12:29 AM
Subject: [PANTUGGeneral] Re: hard drive recovery services?
JP Vossen wrote:
> Any other ideas? 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.
I have seen this N40P before. All my research said you must send it out. It requires special hardware to write the firmware to the drive. Google N40P for more info. Now your search is for the cheapest N40P repair. This is a known problem with those maxtors and the reason I gave up using them several years ago. I had a client who got burned by it.
ONLINE http://forums.actionfront.com/showthread.php?t=339
"If you see this drive as N40P, you definitly don't have electronics problem. So PCB swap likley won't help. Drive is locked in the "Safe mode" , by one reason or another. It's likely have firmware problem but could be a problem with heads/preamplifier , which will require internal work. Sligh possiility exist that r/w channel chip is died and but all other componnets on PCB are working, in that case PCB swap will help... but that is very low chance, since majority of PCB work to allow it to be detected as N40P."
Later,
Troy
Stear, Brad
-----Original Message-----
From: dle...@pantug.org [mailto:dle...@pantug.org] On Behalf Of JP
Vossen
Sent: Friday, July 06, 2007 12:30 AM
Subject: [PANTUGGeneral] Re: hard drive recovery services?
JP Vossen wrote:
> A neighbor has a hard drive that died suddenly and he'd like to
> recover the data. I haven't seen it yet, so I can't say how bad it
> is, but it's possible that it's so dead that a PC won't even recognize
it.
Update: I got my hands on it. It's--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 won't
help, since I can't even dd the raw data... Anyone disagree?
Any other ideas? 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.
________________________
==> /proc/ide/hdb/capacity <==
80293332
==> /proc/ide/hdb/media <==
disk
==> /proc/ide/hdb/smart_thresholds <==
==> /proc/ide/hdb/smart_values <==
---- cut here ----
Russ Wenner
I have heard that GetDataBack from http://www.runtime.org/ will work
for a drive having the symptoms you described. There is a FAT version
and an NTFS. You have to set the non-working drive as a slave in a
working Windows machine and you will of course need plenty of free
space some where to copy off the bad drive's data. The trial software
will show you that it found the data, etc. but you will need to
purchase it to actually move the data off.
--
Russ
--
Russ