On Wed, 27 Oct 2004 17:51:06 +0100, James Wilkinson <james@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > 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 > > -- > > > fedora-list mailing list > fedora-list@xxxxxxxxxx > To unsubscribe: http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list To make it faster, can you just do just _part_ of the directory tree with dd? E.g., not do a 70 g partition of / when you can maybe scrap your apps and just dd /home or something like that. Later you can remount /home over your fresh install, or mount it in /tmp and cp over what you need. I would think that you could get by a lot quicker that way. Unless of course we are talking about a production box or something like that. If you don't need to save log files, etc. then this may be a way to cut down the territory considerably. Marc Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. Ayn Rand
