[mythtv-users] Hard drive failure -- recovery method suggestions

[Mark Perkins]

> On 28 Apr 2015, at 10:55 pm, "Jerry" <mythtv at hambone.e4ward.com> wrote:
> 
>> On Mon, Apr 27, 2015 at 12:10 PM, Stephen Worthington <stephen_agent at jsw.gen.nz> wrote:
>> 
>> The errors being reported are likely for an attempt to read the master
>> boot record (MBR) where the partition table is stored.  If the MBR is
>> unreadable, that is not fatal to data recovery, but it sure does not
>> help.  If it is a head crash that has killed the track the MBR is on,
>> then the rest of the disk can be OK, but will likely be unreadable as
>> the head is damaged.  It would be worth trying using dd to read a few
>> random locations further up the disk.  If you try that, listen
>> carefully to see if you can hear the click or buzz sound of the heads
>> moving - if they do not move, there is no hope for reading anything.
>> 
>> I believe modern drives actually store some hidden data about
>> themselves on the disk somewhere, including a serial number, various
>> settings and encryption keys for encrypted drives.  It sounds like the
>> controller is unable to read that data correctly now, hence the wrong
>> drive size being reported.  So my guess would be that you will find no
>> sectors able to be read anywhere, with the problem being in the head
>> or the electronics.  If so, the only way that recovery is likely now
>> is through a professional firm that has specialised equipment (eg they
>> could move the disk platters themselves to another drive to be read).
>> But that is pretty expensive.
>> 
>> To check if the drive really is unable to read its identity data, use
>> the command "smartctl -i /dev/sd<x>" on it - it should be able to
>> report the drive type, size and serial number and so on.  It should
>> look something like this:
> 
> <snip>
>  
>> It might still be worthwhile cooling the drive in the fridge to see if
>> that helps - at this point, there would seem to be little chance that
>> anything you try would make the damage worse.  But the cooling trick
>> is normally for bearings that are going, and what you have does not
>> have the right symptoms for that.
> 
> Here is the result of that command.  It appears that the drive now is 137 GB, so it grew a little bit overnight (from 4.1 GB) :)
> 
> [root at htpc ~]# smartctl -i /dev/sdd
> smartctl 6.2 2014-07-16 r3952 [x86_64-linux-3.19.5-200.fc21.x86_64] (local build)
> Copyright (C) 2002-13, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org
> 
> === START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
> Device Model:     ST3000DM001
> Serial Number:    <serial number>
> LU WWN Device Id: 5 000c50 04edd0b44
> Firmware Version: CC29
> User Capacity:    137,438,952,960 bytes [137 GB]
> Sector Size:      512 bytes logical/physical
> Rotation Rate:    7200 rpm
> Device is:        Not in smartctl database [for details use: -P showall]
> ATA Version is:   ATA8-ACS T13/1699-D revision 4
> SATA Version is:  SATA 3.0, 6.0 Gb/s
> Local Time is:    Tue Apr 28 09:15:33 2015 EDT
> SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
> SMART support is: Enabled
> 
> I haven't put it in the refrigerator yet.
> 
> Thanks for you continued help.
> 
> Jerry
> _______________________________________________

IIRC you currently have the HDD in a USB enclosure - are you sure the USB enclosure is not messing with things? Have you tried putting it back onto a SATA port again, maybe on a different PC?
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.mythtv.org/pipermail/mythtv-users/attachments/20150428/6daa334a/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
_______________________________________________
mythtv-users mailing list
mythtv-users at mythtv.org
http://lists.mythtv.org/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
http://wiki.mythtv.org/Mailing_List_etiquette
MythTV Forums: https://forum.mythtv.org