On Wed, 26 Aug 2009 18:10:38 +0200 cpghost <cpgh...@cordula.ws> wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 02:51:41PM -0600, Tim Judd wrote: > > >> Buy spinrite, no matter what. > > > > It's OS/FS independent. it works on the bits stored on the magnetic > > platters, NOT on a filesystem. TiVo, Linux, BSD and Mac OSX drives > > are treated the same. Bits on a magnetic platter. It's recovery > > stems from the randomization and movement of the head to the sector > > in question that allows it to salvage any bits it can (for example, > > other recovery will abandon 512bytes if 1 bit cannot be read. > > spinrite will recover 512bytes-1bit to a hard drive's spare sector > > once spinrite says "i'm done working with this sector".) It leads > > to a very successful rate. > > (Disclaimer: I'm not familiar with spinrite.) > > 512bytes-1bit may be read back, but you can't be sure that those are > the correct bytes! IIRC, sectors are usually protected by some kind of > ECC. Simply ignoring the ECC and reading raw magnetic data will all > too often result in corrupt sectors. > > Of course, if you have out-of-band error correction or at least error > detection mechanisms (like .PAR or md5/sha1 checksums), raw magnetic > recovery is better than nothing, if you're desperate. > > -cpghost. I have used Spinrite several times with excellent results. In fact, I recently used it to recover a Laptop drive that had become unusable. Spinrite tries to turn off ECC if possible. It is not the cheapest product; however, it works better than anything else I have tried on bonked discs. Use it on its highest recover level and it will recover the drive; although it may take a while. http://www.grc.com/intro.htm -- Jerry ges...@yahoo.com Lord, defend me from my friends; I can account for my enemies. Charles D'Hericault _______________________________________________ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"
