I think the problem is with the system. If you cannot boot from the CD Rom then I think you may have a more serious problem. I am somewhat anti-Dell because of the 2 pieces of crap servers Boston User Groups bought a few years ago (1 for BLU). Both systems failed after time.
On 01/26/2012 12:47 AM, Greg Rundlett (freephile) wrote: > I have an internal hard drive that won't boot. > > The system (Dell Studio Hybrid) also will not boot from CD-ROM > (regardless of what I do with the boot sequence, F2, BIOS settings > etc.) In fact it doesn't seem that BIOS settings actually get saved. > But that's another matter. I'm concerned with recovering data from > the failed drive. And obviously using a bootable CD like the System > Rescue CD won't work. > > I bought an enclosure so that I could read from the drive using my > laptop as the working host. > > The bad drive in question is 250GB and has a number of partitions and > file system types: > > Disk /dev/sdc: 250.1 GB, 250059350016 bytes > 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders > Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes > Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes > I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes > Disk identifier: 0x50000000 > > Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System > /dev/sdc1 1 7 56196 de Dell Utility > /dev/sdc2 8 1966 15728640 7 HPFS/NTFS > /dev/sdc3 * 1966 5881 31453961 7 HPFS/NTFS > /dev/sdc4 5882 30401 196956900 5 Extended > /dev/sdc5 5882 29402 188932401 83 Linux > /dev/sdc6 29403 30401 8024436 82 Linux swap / > Solaris > > At first I tried dd_rescue to copy the entire device to a file on an > external 1TB drive. The device is a dual-boot setup so it has a > Windows partition and a Linux partition (plus factory-installed > recovery and utility partitions). dd_rescue copied a lot of data but > it complained when I ran fsck on the resulting file: > > # fsck -y /media/disk-a/backups/hybrid/backup.img > > fsck from util-linux-ng 2.17.2 > e2fsck 1.41.11 (14-Mar-2010) > fsck.ext2: Superblock invalid, trying backup blocks... > fsck.ext2: Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open > /media/disk-a/backups/hybrid/backup.img > > The superblock could not be read or does not describe a correct ext2 > filesystem. If the device is valid and it really contains an ext2 > filesystem (and not swap or ufs or something else), then the > superblock > is corrupt, and you might try running e2fsck with an alternate > superblock: > e2fsck -b 8193 <device> > > > This leads me to think that I can't create a backup of the entire > device to a single file if the device is partitioned into multiple > file system types. So, I'm back to square one. I'm going to try > gnu *ddrescue *and create a copy of just the Linux partition into a > file on the external USB drive. Then I'll try mounting that file as a > loop device to see if I have my data. > > Is my understanding correct, or should I be able to backup the entire, > multi-filesystem, multi-partition device. In the latter case, I was > going to restore it to a new drive (still in the mail) and hope that > I'd still be able to dual-boot the system. If I can only do one OS at > a time, then I'm hoping I won't run into problems trying to install my > licensed copy of windows onto a new hard drive from media that I don't > have. > > > Greg Rundlett > my public PGP key > <http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x5E07A26B877CEBF6> > > > _______________________________________________ > gnhlug-discuss mailing list > gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org > http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/ -- Jerry Feldman <g...@blu.org> Boston Linux and Unix PGP key id:3BC1EB90 PGP Key fingerprint: 49E2 C52A FC5A A31F 8D66 C0AF 7CEA 30FC 3BC1 EB90
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