[mythtv-users] Lost my OS hard drive

[James Crow]

Jim Morton wrote:
>
>
> James Crow wrote:
>> Today I switched from DSL to cable internet. The installer asked me 
>> to move my computer (MBE) so that he could install a jack behind it. 
>> I shut everything down and moved the system. When I powered things 
>> back up I got the horrible click of death from one of my drives. It 
>> turns out that the drive that had failed is my OS disk. All my 
>> recordings sit on dedicated spindles. I also had a cron job that 
>> backed up my database every night and saved it to a directory under 
>> /home. Problem is that /home was on the same spindle as my /. In 
>> hindsight that was obviously not the correct place to store the mysql 
>> backup, but I don't think I realized it when I set things up.
>>
>> So now I have lost my mythconverg DB as well as its backups. All my 
>> recordings are intact. Is there any way to rebuild the portion of the 
>> database that shows the recorded files with just the recordings? I 
>> have an older db backup from ~ 6 months ago on an older machine so 
>> that will contain some of the older recorded and then deleted 
>> programs. I have 1.9TB of recordings and would hate to just end up 
>> with files I can view through mythvideo instead of through the 
>> recordings interface.
>>
>> If anyone has any ideas on possible ways to salvage a drive with the 
>> click of death I'm open to suggestions.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> James
>
> I had one that would not spin up. After the freezer trick didn't work 
> and banging it around didn't work, I took the cover off of it (it had 
> those security torx screws) and while plugged into a system, started 
> the platters spinning by hand. Once I got it spinning, it kept going 
> and worked long enough to copy everything to another drive.
>
Good idea, but I can hear the platters spinning up. After they have spun 
for a bit (I'm guessing getting up to speed) then the click sound 
starts. It sounds like the drive attempts to position the heads several 
times and they slam into a stop or something. It repeats the click 
several times, pauses, and then clicks again. After maybe ten or so 
click sequences the drive seems to shut down. I guess the electronics 
are trying to keep it from doing more damage.

Thanks,
James