On 8/9/07, Lief Hendrickson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > At 09:08 PM 8/9/07 -0700, Richard W. Ernst wrote: > >Lief Hendrickson wrote: > >>At 04:57 PM 8/9/07 -0700, you wrote: > >>>On 8/9/07, Lief Hendrickson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >>> > I have a 80 GB hard drive that was in an external USB enclosure. It > >>> > stopped working. I put the drive in a different enclosure and > >>> > connected. The computer recognized that there is a USB drive but says > >>> > it > >>> > is unformatted. Can anyone help with data revovery? Thanks. > >>> > > >>> > >>>Explain further "it stopped working". > >>> > >>>Can you tell whether the disk is spinning? Listen for bearing noises, > >>>feel for vibration, try to detect gyroscopic effects. > >>> > >>> carl > >>>-- > >>> carl lowenstein marine physical lab u.c. san diego > >>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] > >>It physically works fine as far as I can tell based on comparing the > >>running sound to other hard drives. I should have said it stopped being > >>accessible. I put it in another USB hard drive enclosure - after > >>verifying that the USB enclosure works with another hard drive. The > >>computer recognized there is a hard drive present, but it can not access > >>it. I tried it under windows 2000 - I went to a DOS prompt and entered > >>the disk letter and got a message saying the disk is unformatted and > >>asking me if I want to format it. I wonder if something at the beginning > >>of the disk has become corrupted making it look like it's unformatted and > >>if so the problem is how to recover formatting (partition table > >>problem???) without losing all the data. Any ideas or sources of > >>expertise would be appreciated. > > > >I'd try physically mounting it IN the computer that you want to access it, > >vs. in another USB device. More control would be available, including dd > >for a backup before diagnostics. > > > I gather dd is a way to copy what is on the hard drive. The bad hard drive > is 80 GB. Would I need to copy at the byte level to another hard drive > with 80 GB free space? which means it would be >80 GB to also have space > for linux. > > or could I boot to a Linux cd ( I have Knoppix 3.6 bootable cd if that > would work) with two hard drives connected as IDE drives inside the > computer? (i. e. the problem hard drive and a second hard drive to become > a duplicate) I do have another 80 GB hard drive with stuff I'll never > use. Would it be possible to mirror everything from the problem hard drive > to the other one? What would the dd command line be (i.e. all the command > line options)? thanks.
Other things to try. Preferably installing the problem drive directly in the CPU box rather than adding the intermediate USB. Using Knoppix is a good idea. Try to read the partition table of the drive. As root: /sbin/fdisk -l # that's l for list (ell). will list the partition tables of any disks that are found. You should be able to distinguish one drive from another (hda vs. hdc). If there does not seem to be a partition table on the problem disk, perhaps it can be rescued with a tool named "gpart", which stands for "guess partitions". Not to be confused with "gparted" which is a partition editor. There is a pretty good writeup of gpart at < http://www.linux.com/articles/57748 >. gpart is present on Knoppix 3.6 as /sbin/gpart. It would really be good if someone more experienced was watching over your shoulder rather than trying to do this by email. Unfortunately the August 11 InstallFest has been canceled due to the vacation schedule at the National City venue. carl -- carl lowenstein marine physical lab u.c. san diego [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-newbie
