[Techtalk] Hard drive failure - data recovery options?

[Conor Daly]

On Tue, Jan 28, 2003 at 01:55:45AM -0800 or so it is rumoured hereabouts, 
Megan Golding thought:
> Just my luck -- my Linux PC at work died this weekend. When I arrived
> on Monday, the screen read something like "Loading
> linux....decompressing linux....crc error Halting".
> 
> I'm pretty sure the hard drive is kaput. Let's assume it is. Any
> suggestions on recovering data?
> 
> This is more an academic exercise than real need to get at that data,
> so feel free to throw experimental ideas my way.

One thought is to boot rescue mode from a distro CD and see if you can dd
the hard disk off to another disk (or image file).  Failing that (ie. if
the disk itself is failing), stick the disk in a freezer overnight[0] and
then try the rescue CD / dd trick.

Conor
[0] I don't know how this works but I'm told it sometimes does...
-- 
Conor Daly <conor.daly at oceanfree.net>

Domestic Sysadmin :-)
---------------------
Faenor.cod.ie
 10:42am  up 83 days, 19:26,  2 users,  load average: 0.10, 0.09, 0.07
Hobbiton.cod.ie
 10:40am  up 33 days, 11:18,  4 users,  load average: 0.00, 0.09, 0.07