[Techtalk] Disk recovery?

[Maria Blackmore]

On Mon, 28 Jul 2003, Rudy L. Zijlstra wrote:

> I've a 60G disk from a friend that he could'nt read anymore. Linux 
> basically tells me that lba sectors 0 up to and including 6 are 
> unreadable. In other words, the most important sectors have gone to 
> bitheaven.

can you define "unreadable" please? what is the error message?

> Considering that he had (has?) at least half a year of intensive work on 
> that disk, I have 2 questions:

It's probably still there, but I believe your friend has no learned a very
important lesson, which is the vital importance of keeping backups.

> (1) Any suggestions on how to get data from that disk with the following 
> provisos:
>       - its circuitry is at least partially to HW heaven as well, i can 
> only get it working as slave, not as master (not recognised on the bus 
> with no other device present)

This does not bode well at all, but does the drive identify it's
make/model correctly when being run like this?

It may be the case that you cannot trust the data coming off the drive.

>       - So it may well be that the platter is OK, but the circuitry is 
> not, resulting in the found problems

This is a distinct possibility, yes.  You may find milage in obtaining a
hard drive of the exact same model, and swapping the drive electronics
from the good drive to the bad drive.

>       - I have no clue as to what the partition layout was (only that is 
> was all M$ FAT32, and several paritions).

This makes life rather awkward.  With trial and error, assuming the drive
can be made to function correctly, it may be possible to retrieve data
stored on the latter partitions

>       - (because of different projects) i happen to have several disks 
> lying around that are big enough for a dd copy.

This assumes that you can rely on the data copied from the drive in your
environment.

> (2) Any suggestions for a european data recovery center / company?

I would have suggested Vogon, until they recently tried to defraud the
serious fraud office here in the UK.  Strangely they were taken to court,
and lost.

http://theregister.co.uk/content/63/31870.html

What I would suggest is you approach a few firms you find in the vicinity,
and ask them for quotes.  Data recovery can approach quite reasonable
rates when you do not have time as a limiting factor, so be sure to
mention this when you ask them.  The easiest way to find such companies
would be through the application of google, I would suggest.

> P.S. owner is not on the copy list, and has been told loudly and clearly 
> that he's a fool for not making backups

The best learned lessons are the ones learned the hard way.

Maria :)