<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto"><div><br></div><div><br>On 28 Apr 2015, at 10:55 pm, "Jerry" <<a href="mailto:mythtv@hambone.e4ward.com">mythtv@hambone.e4ward.com</a>> wrote:<br><br></div><blockquote type="cite"><div><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_extra"><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Apr 27, 2015 at 12:10 PM, Stephen Worthington <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:stephen_agent@jsw.gen.nz" target="_blank">stephen_agent@jsw.gen.nz</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div class=""><div class="h5"><br>
</div></div>The errors being reported are likely for an attempt to read the master<br>
boot record (MBR) where the partition table is stored. If the MBR is<br>
unreadable, that is not fatal to data recovery, but it sure does not<br>
help. If it is a head crash that has killed the track the MBR is on,<br>
then the rest of the disk can be OK, but will likely be unreadable as<br>
the head is damaged. It would be worth trying using dd to read a few<br>
random locations further up the disk. If you try that, listen<br>
carefully to see if you can hear the click or buzz sound of the heads<br>
moving - if they do not move, there is no hope for reading anything.<br>
<br>
I believe modern drives actually store some hidden data about<br>
themselves on the disk somewhere, including a serial number, various<br>
settings and encryption keys for encrypted drives. It sounds like the<br>
controller is unable to read that data correctly now, hence the wrong<br>
drive size being reported. So my guess would be that you will find no<br>
sectors able to be read anywhere, with the problem being in the head<br>
or the electronics. If so, the only way that recovery is likely now<br>
is through a professional firm that has specialised equipment (eg they<br>
could move the disk platters themselves to another drive to be read).<br>
But that is pretty expensive.<br>
<br>
To check if the drive really is unable to read its identity data, use<br>
the command "smartctl -i /dev/sd<x>" on it - it should be able to<br>
report the drive type, size and serial number and so on. It should<br>
look something like this:<br></blockquote><div><br></div><div><snip><br></div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
It might still be worthwhile cooling the drive in the fridge to see if<br>
that helps - at this point, there would seem to be little chance that<br>
anything you try would make the damage worse. But the cooling trick<br>
is normally for bearings that are going, and what you have does not<br>
have the right symptoms for that.<br></blockquote></div><br></div><div class="gmail_extra">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) :)<br></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br>[root@htpc ~]# smartctl -i /dev/sdd<br>smartctl 6.2 2014-07-16 r3952 [x86_64-linux-3.19.5-200.fc21.x86_64] (local build)<br>Copyright (C) 2002-13, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, <a href="http://www.smartmontools.org">www.smartmontools.org</a><br><br>=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===<br>Device Model: ST3000DM001<br>Serial Number: <serial number><br>LU WWN Device Id: 5 000c50 04edd0b44<br>Firmware Version: CC29<br>User Capacity: 137,438,952,960 bytes [137 GB]<br>Sector Size: 512 bytes logical/physical<br>Rotation Rate: 7200 rpm<br>Device is: Not in smartctl database [for details use: -P showall]<br>ATA Version is: ATA8-ACS T13/1699-D revision 4<br>SATA Version is: SATA 3.0, 6.0 Gb/s<br>Local Time is: Tue Apr 28 09:15:33 2015 EDT<br>SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.<br>SMART support is: Enabled<br><br></div><div class="gmail_extra">I haven't put it in the refrigerator yet.<br><br>Thanks for you continued help.<br><br></div><div class="gmail_extra"></div><div class="gmail_extra">Jerry<br></div></div>
</div></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><div><span>_______________________________________________</span><br></div></blockquote><br><div>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?</div></body></html>