[mythtv-users] failing hard drive - advice on recovering specific recordings - mythlink perhaps

Stephen P. Villano stephen.p.villano at gmail.com
Sat Jun 28 18:06:33 UTC 2014


On 6/28/14, 1:30 PM, Gary Buhrmaster wrote:
> On Sat, Jun 28, 2014 at 4:13 PM, jacek burghardt
> <jaceksburghardt at gmail.com> wrote:
>> life hacker says it works.
> Throwing the drive down the hall works sometimes
> too.  Yes, I do have "proof" of that; The drive was dead,
> the owner threw it down the hall (I am presuming in
> frustration, based on the language being used).  I
> picked it up and was able to get it to spin up and
> read the data.  Specifics matter.  The failure mode
Funny that, we used to bang Seagate 20 meg drives on the table to get
them to spin up and read data off to a new drive.
Of course, in that case, it was due to a loss of lubrication on the
platter bearings. Doing that today would only result in a damaged drive. :)
> matters.  Most recent drives do not have the failure
> modes of older drives.  They have their own spin
> (or lack there of :-).  In any case, I do not give
> advice on hard drive repair based on anecdotal
> results, because I have too hundreds/thousands
> of failing/failed drives of experience, and know that
> specifics matter (although I have been tempted to
> use the throw the drive down the hall method).  If
> I really care about the data (and find all my backups
> are all unreadable), I would consider a data recovery
> service.  If you do not care about the data, any
> method works (successful or not).  For "Just TV",
> I (personally) do not care that much to spend
> very much of my time doing data recovery.  The
> OPs request is reasonable, prioritize the shows
> of most interest, copy them first.  If you get the
> others, you win.  If not, well, it was "just TV".
> _______________________________________________
>
The only thing I've "frozen" a drive or other electronic device for was
to ascertain which component was failing intermittently. Something done
one component at a time.
Today, drives are rather cheap, so making backups isn't an expensive
proposition. I'm personally backing up three terabytes of video to
another array.


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