[TriLUG] OT: hard drive recovery

Scott G. Hall ScottGHall at BellSouth.Net
Wed Apr 23 16:35:39 EDT 2008


I recently went through a similar scenario, same size drive, similar
amount of data (pictures & email), additional problem of corrupted
formatting.  Several places I called quoted $500 - $800.

In my case I had two partitions on the disk -- a FAT32 partition and
a Ext3 partition, further complicating matters.

First things first, I used _dd_ to archive off full binary copies
of each partition (and of the full disk) that I could reuse if I
bungled things.  I had to read the partitions several times in order
to get a good enough read of most of its sectors.  The FAT32
partition read best when the drive was cold and just plugged.  The
Ext3 partition read best after the disk was warmed up for a while.
Each time I had to deal with the drive's bearings and hitting too
many errors.

Then I used several tools to try to recover the files from the
partitions.  For the FAT32 partition, I actually used _dd_ to
record it on a new drive (use a partitioning tool to create an
exact sized partition, and just _dd_ the old image onto the new
partition).  Then I used ZAR (Zero Assumption Recovery) to
extract as many files as possible.  Here is a link to get the
software tool: http://www.z-a-recovery.com/  (its costs money)

For the Linux partition, I bought "Recover Data for Linux" and
used their tool against a mounted copy of the _dd_ image.  Here
is their website: http://www.linuxdiskrecovery.com/  (not free)

Both tools were not able to recover all of my files, but I got
a good 85% of them back.  Since I have _dd_ copies of the images,
I have also been extracting individual sectors and piecing back
email files by hand (since they are ASCII and EMACS handles them
pretty well).  Picture and WAV files are considerably hardder,
especially since some of the data did not read off of the disk
or there was write errors before I attempted to save and recover
things.

Bottom line, I spent only $100 to get most of my files back in
a few hours worth of work, but I have spent numerous hours manually
trying to recover the last 10% or so of files the automated tools
could not get.

Another companies selling Linux recovery software:
http://www.diskdoctors.net/linux-data-recovery/software.html,
http://www.unistal.com/, and http://www.stellarinfo.com/

If you do prefer to send out your disk for recovery, I have had
good luck with OnTrack Data Recovery: 
http://www.ontrackdatarecovery.com/0707_data-recovery-service-ps/

Good luck.

Shawn Hood wrote:
> I have a 80GB Seagate SATA drive out of a MacBook.  It's  has
> decided to start clicking.  It has a couple of years worth of
> photos and documents on it.  I may seek out a recovery service
> -- DriveSavers has quoted me 500-1800 based on success.  Has
> anyone had success with any less expensive companies?  I'm not
> complaining about 500, but 1800 on the high end is a bit steep.

-- 
Scott G. Hall
Raleigh, NC, USA
ScottGHall at BellSouth.Net




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