Todd Walton wrote: > On Sat, Apr 26, 2008 at 6:31 AM, Brad Campbell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> Long story short (yeah yeah) I remembered my iRiver h340 has the same >> physical size drive with the >> same connector, so stripping the iRiver down to bare board I fitted the >> drive, plugged in a USB and >> PSU cable and stuck the whole thing in a "Glad" sandwich bag sealed with >> cellotape. Popped the whole >> lot in the freezer and ran the cables out through the door seal. Chilled it >> down and plugged it in. >> >> rsync, dd_rescue, dd, nc and gzip are fantastic data recovery tools :) > > I just went through the same disk failure ordeal. I was saved by > ddrescue and SpinRite. I used ddrescue (off the Ubuntu Rescue Remix > CD) to copy all the original contents it could get over to a backup. > Then SpinRite, which took overnight. Then ddrescue to copy over the > recovered disk. Booted in and it worked! SpinRite repaired the disk, > even with its bad block. I was amazed. No freezer involved. > > SpinRite: > http://www.grc.com/spinrite.htm >
Yep, I've used spinrite since my 1st 8088 years ago.. but in my case it was just making things worse.. it had "rescued" over 500 sectors before I realised it was simply chewing through the spare sectors and decided to actually get the data off before I let it toast what was left of the drive. Spinrite is good for the odd bad sector.. but if the disk is _really_ failing then it can just make things worse.. Where spinrite was choking reading sectors, running the drive at about -4 Degrees C made for slow, but completely clean reads.. This one wasn't simply a bad block.. at room temperature it was just "click..click..click" and would not even get as far as reading sector zero. Spinrite was reading the sectors and writing them to spares.. but as fast as it could do that the spares were failing underneath it. The freezer is always last resort prior to ripping the cover off the drive and performing surgery (or swapping logic boards).. but about half the time it does the job. My tool of choice is a re-mastered Ubuntu 7.10 live-cd with all the recovery tools, f-prot and avg antivirus, and spinrite added to the boot menu.. I've also added ssh server and a pre-configured vpn client so I can give the disk to my parents, they plug their laptop into the net, boot the cd and it automatically gets a vpn connection to my server in Dubai, then I can ssh straight into the machine and perform remote surgery :) Brad -- "Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so." -- Douglas Adams
