[KLUG Members] Any way to read this disk?

[Matt Scott]

On Fri, 2004-02-27 at 21:24, Jamie McCarthy wrote:
> I have a laptop HD that has died and I'm trying to mount it on a
> desktop machine.  I've got the 2.5"-to-3.5" adapter and when I hook
> it up and boot, I see this in dmesg:
> 
>     hdc: , ATA DISK drive
>     hdc: attached ide-disk driver.
>     hdc: 0 sectors (0 MB) w/1KiB Cache, CHS=0/255/63
>     hdc: set_multmode: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
>     hdc: set_multmode: error=0x04 { DriveStatusError }
>     
>     [later...]
>     
>     hdc : bad access: block=0, count=8
>     end_request: I/O error, dev 16:00 (hdc), sector 0
>     hdc : bad access: block=2, count=6
>     end_request: I/O error, dev 16:00 (hdc), sector 2
>     hdc : bad access: block=4, count=4
>     end_request: I/O error, dev 16:00 (hdc), sector 4
>     hdc : bad access: block=6, count=2
>     end_request: I/O error, dev 16:00 (hdc), sector 6
>     [etc.]
> 
> I can see some info about the drive in /proc/ide/hdc, notably its
> model number in the 'identify' file.  But any attempt to look at it
> gets:
> 
>     # fdisk /dev/hdc
>     Unable to open /dev/hdc
> 
> Trying to cat /dev/hdc gets me I/O errors, etc.
> 
> It seems like the drive is real close to working, when the machine
> powers up I hear it spin up and hear its arm seeking.  Anyone have
> any idea of anything else I could try, to read this disk? I'd be
> ecstatic if I could cat the whole /dev/hdc file to my real drive,
> and work from there.

Jamie, 

One program you may be interested in looking at is dd_rescue.  It is
similar to dd except it ignores errors.  You may be able to use it to
make an image of your hard drive that you can then mount and fsck. 
There's more info on it at http://www.garloff.de/kurt/linux/ddrescue/

I've never used it myself but I thought I'd pass it along.

Matt