Re: OT: dying disk - data recovery recommendations

[Ron Johnson <ron.l.johnson@cox.net>]

On 01/08/08 16:42, KS wrote:
> Ron Johnson wrote:
> > On 01/08/08 16:19, KS wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > I have a friend's G4(PPC) which seems to have a dying disk. He had run
> > Linux or OSX?
>
> OS X Tiger on the G4(PPC)
>
> > > the Apple disk utility and it reported and error with the IDE disk. The
> > > machine just halts sometimes, with the disk trying to read something and
> > > the only way to shut down the machine was the power button.
> > >
> > > I tried doing an rsync to a remote directory and it made the hard disk
> > > busy after sending about 350MB (total home data is around 6GB). I have
> > Busy?  Isn't it *supposed* to be busily sending 6GB of data across the
> > wire?
> >
> > Or does "busy" mean something else?
>
> I agree 6GB will take time to transfer, but there was no change in the
> size of the directory where I was dumping. Plus the activity monitor on
> the G4 was not showing any network transfer. I did wait for about half
> an hour though.

So the drive light was lit, but nothing was happening?

> > > shut down the machine and trying to list various options of salvaging
> > > the data from the HDD. I was reading up on dd_rescue (had tried it on a
> > > couple of CDs earlier), foremost, and Sleuthkit. Does anyone have any
> > > recommendations on how to proceed in this case? Any live CD(PPC) which
> > > will be more helpful than the systemrescueCD (0.2.0 PPC)?
> > What happens when you fsck it?
> Didn't try that yet. Will do that tomorrow morning.

I'd also "# tail -f /var/log/syslog" (or the BSD equivalent) while 
you are trying the transfer.

--
Ron Johnson, Jr.
Jefferson LA  USA

"I'm not a vegetarian because I love animals, I'm a vegetarian
because I hate vegetables!"
unknown