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

[Hika van den Hoven]

Hoi Jerry,

Monday, April 27, 2015, 1:57:28 AM, you wrote:

> On Fri, Apr 17, 2015 at 3:33 PM, Nicolas Krzywinski <myth at site7even.de>
> wrote:

>> Message: 8
>>> Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2015 09:47:54 -0400
>>> From: Jerry <mythtv at hambone.e4ward.com>
>>> To: mythtv-users at mythtv.org
>>> Subject: Re: [mythtv-users] Hard drive failure -- recovery method
>>>         suggestions
>>> Message-ID:
>>>         <CAO_Sck7bqfjhqO=BRu1mkOFiioU3NeVQbvJ=
>>> 4jfmMio0MpY2Pw at mail.gmail.com>
>>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>>>
>>>
>>> Thanks Stephen and Simon.  ddrescue sounds good to me.  I do have the
>>> system partition on a separate SSD disk, so I will be able to install
>>> it
>>> there and log without issue.  I also have an additional 3 TB hard
>>> drive of
>>> the same brand in my closet at home.
>>>
>>> This is a recording drive and a videos drive.  I do have some home
>>> videos
>>> on there, but I think that I have backups for those elsewhere, and I
>>> have
>>> also given them to my sister and my mother.  Fortunately, nothing of
>>> real
>>> value is at stake, but it will still take a while to recover any
>>> shows that
>>> may be repeated in the future.
>>>
>>> I had heard that there might be issues with the Seagate 3 TB hard
>>> drives
>>> but I went ahead and bought one anyway.  I got the second one at a
>>> really
>>> good price as an insurance policy.  Now I am glad that I did.
>>>
>>> Hopefully it won't be too bad.  I haven't fully taken a look at the
>>> reports, but it looks like it failed a SMART health check and then
>>> failed
>>> to read SMART data (something like that) and was then mounted as
>>> read-only.  I got several notices about 328 sectors failing, but of
>>> course
>>> this number may have increased.  Again, it's hard for me to diagnose
>>> now
>>> since I don't have physical access to the machine.
>>>
>>> Thanks again for your suggestions!
>>>
>>> Jerry
>>>
>> I once had a faulty hard drive that was fully usable after letting it
>> cool down. It then worked for a few hours until it started failing
>> again. This gave me the chance to get all the data from the drive in a
>> few sessions. But it took several hours to let the drive cool down
>> completely until it worked again. Because one may have other stuff to do
>> than to sit beside a drive and watch it cooling, this was a several days
>> procedure, of course ;-)
>>
>> You wrote about failed sectors, ok, but I note another experience
>> nevertheless: If there would have been only crc read errors, it may have
>> been the cable only that suddenly stopped working correctly. But
>> nowadays this may not be as likely as back in the dark age of IDE! :D
>>
>> As the others recommended already to fully dump the faulty drive prior
>> to making any data rescue actions, there is nothing more left to say,
>> than: Good luck!
>>

> When I arrived home yesterday, my machine was frozen.  I booted and the
> drive was detected as 4.1 GB, not 3 TB or 2.73 TB or thereabouts.  I was
> unable to run fdisk on it and got an error.

> I'm not sure if I can salvage anything at this point and I'm not sure I
> want to spend days trying to grab whatever is left.  There is a cable
> company DVR in the other room that captured almost all of the content that
> I missed over the period I was away.  I lost some movies but I probably
> needed to delete a bunch of them anyway.

> I still have the drive here on my desk.  Does anyone have any suggestions
> at this point?  It sounds like the freezer is a bad idea.

> I have not tried plugging it in externally yet.  I'm still pretty tired
> from the long trip home (32 hours from waking up in the hotel to arriving
> home and five airplane flights!)  I'll try this again but I'll wait on
> advice in case there is something I should do next.

> It is still under warranty from Seagate and then in June it's under another
> extended warranty.  I'll get a new drive if I wait until June, which of
> course may not be the greatest if these 3 TB drives are problematic. :)

> I'd love to try liquid nitrogen if I could get access to it.  I used to use
> it at my old job, but unfortunately I don't work in a lab anymore.  It's
> hell on fire ant mounds!

> Thanks for all the advice.

> Jerry

Don't use liquid nitrogen. It's cold enough to get metal parts break
spontaneously!

Tot mails,
  Hika                            mailto:hikavdh at gmail.com

"Zonder hoop kun je niet leven
Zonder leven is er geen hoop
Het eeuwige dilemma
Zeker als je hoop moet vernietigen om te kunnen overleven!"

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