[mythtv-users] Help with a semi-busted hard drive (with all my recordings)

[Kristo Kriechbaum]

On Sunday 05 February 2006 7:33 am, Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> On Sat, Feb 04, 2006 at 09:33:48PM -0800, Kristo Kriechbaum wrote:
> > So I was making some changes in my mythbox today, and I really screwed
> > up.  I broke a surface mount capacitor on one of my hard drives.  I tried
> > to resolder it back on, but it ended up breaking apart a bit.  This drive
> > is (was?) part of an lvm group that has all our recordings, music, and
> > video on it.
> >
> > The drive is a Seagate Barracuda 7200.7, 200Gb, model ST32000822A. 
> > Pictures detailing the damage are at
> > http://robotics.caltech.edu/~klk/drive/
>
> Understand this: you're buying a new drive anyway.  There's noother
> practical alternative.
>
> So, given that: buy the drive.  Hook the new one and the "broken" one
> up, and see if you can use dd to copy the data off of the old one.
> Even with the part gone, you might find yourself surprised, and it will
> work.  If so, then you now have a drive to plug into your arrayasa
> replacement, and you can then send the broken drive back.
>
> If not, as someone pointed out, you can always steal a logic board from
> yet *another* drive in your array (assuming you have a second drive of
> that size -- look for version numbers on the boards: if it's an *exact*
> match -- which it will be if you bought them together, usually, then
> you're ok) and put it on the "bad" drive long enough to copy from it to
> the new drive.
>
> But you're *still* buying a new drive.  It's the price you pay.
>
> Now, since this isn't RAID, you *can* buy a *larger* new drive, a 400
> or 500, if you can afford it.  LVM will let you grow your volumes into
> the new space, after you copy the old data on; just create a new
> partition.

I have no problem with buying a new drive.  The problem is the "broken" one is 
not recognized at all by the bios when it is plugged in.  I don't have 
another drive like this to swap out the controller boards temporarily.  I 
found a 160G Barracuda, but the layout of the logic board, as well as some of 
the larger chips, is completely different.

I also realize that the value of the capacitor is not critical.  But since 
there are no letters/numbers on it, I don't even have an idea of what is 
"reasonable".

Thanks to everyone for their help so far.  Any help is appreciated.  Mark - if 
your relative can safely measure the capacitor, that's great.  But don't 
break your drive too :-)

Kristo