Emiliano Brunetti wrote: > I am running FC1 and one of my hdd crashed: i can't even mount it. "linux r" suggested: > 3. dd it to another removable device, preferably another (USB > external) hard drive so that you don't run into weird geometry issues > or other time consuming things. > Emiliano replied: > I never really used dd. After i copy the whole partition to another > hopefully healthy drive, can't i just zap everything away from the old > damaged drive and format it? I just wish i could save some of the data. > > Is this correct? Once you've made *sure* you've got everything you can. You should be in paranoia mode here. Your data may be there, or it may not. Keep as many copies as you can: the last thing you want to do is to mess up a command and lose your "good" copy. Incidentally, one of the easiest commands to mess up is dd: make sure you get the if= and the of= devices right. It's too common for someone to get one of these wrong (or put the of device against if= and vice versa), and copy over something they really wanted to keep. I wouldn't do anything to that hard drive until you're happy you've got everything into its new home and properly backed up. And I wouldn't fully trust it, even then. Hope this helps, James. -- E-mail address: james | I suppose if one has to go mad, slowly is the way to @westexe.demon.co.uk | go. You wouldn't want to rush going mad, you might | miss some of the good bits. | -- Paul Tomblin