[nmglug] drive problems

[Nick Frost]

BrianO'Keefe wrote:

>> Have you run the disk manufacturer's diagnostics on the drive? 
> 
>> Are you saying that I should have a cd somewhere that came with the
>> drive for diagnosis? If so I will have to search for it as I don't
>> remember one. It may be somewhere around here.

Well, if the drive is an external Firewire drive, it's likely an EIDE or 
SATA drive mounted in an enclosure.  If you open it, you should be able 
to determine the drive manufacturer (Seagate, WD, Fujitsu, Hitachi, 
etc.) and go to the appropriate website and download and .ISO image to 
make a diagnostic CD. For example, if it's a Seagate drive, then 
"SeaTools" would be what you'd want.

http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/seatools

You *may* be able to run the diagnostic on a PC with the drive connected 
via Firewire in the enclosure.  If not, you might have to remove it 
temporarily from the Firewire enclosure, run the diagnostics, and 
re-assemble the drive into the enclosure.

 >> However, that money is best spent only when you have a
>> drive that has failed manufacturers diagnostics, is known to have bad
>> sectors, or won't spin up.
> I got a quote from Data Sniffers for $500. I asked them what the diff
> was between them and DriveSavers to warrant such a priceand they said
> DriveSavers overcharges. Any input?

I have used Ontrack (for a client) with good results, but it was 
expensive (more or less $2,000 I think).  I am not familiar with Data 
Sniffers and therefore can't comment.  If you can clone the damaged 
partition so you have a backup, it might be worth a try.

>> If it were me and it were possible to clone the partition to another
>> drive without too many I/O errors, I would start there rather than
>> perform such operations on an original data set with no backups (that
>> way you have something to go back to if things go awry).
> What cloning software do you recommend? I have ddrescue but the man
> pages statethat it should not be used in the case of I/O errors (I know
> it's not a cloning tool).

Well, in this instance I (personally) would boot from a LiveCD of any 
Linux distro of choice (Gentoo for me) and try to use DD to clone the 
partition and/or drive to another disk.  However, one must do so with 
care, as DD will not prompt you if you issue a command that will result 
in an overwrite or you have drive designations backwards.  Norton Ghost 
will clone drives, but if you are using a Macintosh, you may prefer 
Carbon Copy Cloner;

http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html

I hope that helps.

-Nick


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Nicholas S. Frost
nickf at nickorama.com