Thanks to everyone: On Mon, 2008-01-14 at 07:42 +0900, John Summerfield wrote: > William Case wrote: > > Hi; > > > > I have a hard disk that seems broken but I am trying to save -- or at > > least save the data on it. > > > > The broken hard disk is a dual boot SCSI disk that worked. > > * BIOS says that the disk is present and accounted for i.e. right > > name and size even after swapping in and out other harddisks. > > Means the electrical and electronic bits appear to work. I don't know > that the motor has to spin up for this to pass. > > > > * Using Fedora rescue disk, parted /dev/sda says can't read sda. > > * Using Fedora rescue disk, fdisk /dev/sda says can't read sda. > > * Using Fedora rescue disk, chroot /mnt/sysimage can't mount > > sysimage. > > That's one test three times. No surprise that, when the first fails the > others do too. It's likely to be a catastrophic such as motor speed not > up to par, rw head don't move (I'm only speculating, I presume these > things can happen). On one hand I think it is a busted, broken, dead disk, on the other hand it was working just recently and the data seems tantalizingly close. > > > * fdisk /mbr says can't fix mbr. ( I am not sure whether this > > message means that nothing is wrong with the mbr or that it is > > beyond repair ) > > I didn't think fdisk on Fedora supported such a thing. > It doesn't, but this disk was used to dual boot Fedora and WindowsXP. Thought I would see if rebuilding the mbr for/to the Windows partition would help find the various partitions. > > > > > I would like to do any of the following: > > * get the hard disk working again, or, > > * view the data on the disk, and/or, > > * rescue the data on the disk. > > > > What should I try next? > > 1. Try knoppix. I am not optimistic though. > 2. Engage expensive data recovery experts. > > I think the disk is bin-fodder. Could very well be. It is a friend's hard disk, not mine. We have swapped disks in and out of two machines, tried so many permutations and combinations of disks, operating systems and roots that I have completely lost track by late tonight. I am going to leave it until morning; start fresh and if I don't make any progress within a couple of hours then, quit. Thanks for the suggestions and help -- Regards Bill
