Re: OT: dying disk - data recovery recommendations
On Wed, Jan 09, 2008 at 09:47:56PM -0500, KS wrote:
> Douglas A. Tutty wrote:
> > On Tue, Jan 08, 2008 at 05:19:54PM -0500, KS wrote:
> >> I have a friend's G4(PPC) which seems to have a dying disk. He had run
> >> 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
> >> 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)?
> >>
> >
> > Find a way to attach that drive to a functional system. One way would
> > be to use a 2.5" portable USB enclosure. Then see if the functional
> > system can dd it to an image file. Then you can try fscking and
> > mounting the image. Copy the image file at each step.
>
> Got the enclosure but taking apart the G4 was a tough task. Could only
> accomplish it today. Will start working on the disk tomorrow. But
> wouldn't dd stall after some time as rsync did after transferring 350MB
> of data? Isn't dd_rescue a better choice in this case?
Perhaps, I've never needed to go that far. The one time I thought I had
a hard drive go bad and put it into another computer, it didn't get any
errors on boot. I just fsck'ed it and it was fine. Turned out to be a
hardware problem on the origional computer.
My only experience with a laptop hard drive is on my IBM Thinkpad 600E.
On that, you don't have to tear apart the unit: one screw releases a
cover and you slide out the hard drive.
So I've never actually needed dd_rescue so I don't know if it would be
better. As long as its not worse, then just that. The important thing
as I understand it is to get an image of the drive once then power off
the drive. Do all your fixing on a copy of the filesystem image. Once
you know what that needs, you can do it to the drive itself.
Doug.
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