On Wed, 21 Jul 2004 09:31:13 -0400, dml@bleazard.net (Jason Bleazard)
wrote:
>Sorry for the off-topic post, but it seems that the primary hard drive
>in our home file server has failed (argh!!!). Just wondering if anyone
>has any suggestions for trying to get the data off it, preferably
>something I can try myself. It's a linux drive, so I tried booting with
>a Knoppix CD, and that refused to talk to the drive. The motherboard
>BIOS says "Primary master hard disk failed" upon bootup, which doesn't
>fill me with hope. The only other thing I can think to try is to pull
>it out of that system and try it in another system to see if, by some
>miracle, the other system might be able to talk to it.
Try getting the diagnostic utilities from the disk manufacturer's web
site. That will give you an idea of what's wrong with the disk. If
it's just bad sectors or a corrupted partition table, you can probably
recover the data yourself. If there's a physical problem with the
disk (bad bearings, one of the head motors is dead, etc.) then you
will probably be out of luck.
>Yes, we do have a backup, but it's from June 11. I'd like to get the
>last 5.5 weeks of stuff back if possible.
>
>If there's nothing I can do myself, does anyone know how much money
>professional data recovery costs?
Professional data recovery is extremely expensive.
DriveSavers is probably the only place I would trust:
http://www.drivesavers.com/index.html
They've been in the biz for a long time.
As a side, when you replace that disk, I would get two disks and use
the Linux software raid feature. That way you won't have to worry
about that sort of problem again. Also, getting those "hard disk
coolers" with a few fans that move air right over the surface of the
disk can really help keep the temperature down which can help protect
against early failure.
-Bill
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