[nmglug] drive problems

[BrianO'Keefe]

Nick Frost wrote:
> 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.
I downloaded testdrive and built it on my Linux box. I can get a Mac OSX
version also and will see how that might work.
>
> >> 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 have CCCloner for OSX but the partition doesn't show up in OSX so
cloning it may be a bit difficult. Cloning the entire drive may be an
option but I certainly don't want to make more damage. I did see many
posts about LaCie drives being notorious foe evaporating partitions at
will. That's how I discovered testdrive.
>
> I hope that helps.
>
> -Nick
It all helps and thank you Nick.
Brian
>
>