From: Eric Shubert > On 10/05/2011 12:17 PM, AZ Pete wrote: >> Does anyone have recommendations for a data recovery business, >> preferably here in the valley. My external drive isn't working. >> Seagate wants $600 for data recovery > Have Jim email me. I might be able to help him out, for a reasonable > fee. I've also done stuff like this a couple of times. Results obtainable with *just* dd_rescue and fsck vary widely depending on how many bad sectors are on the disk. The more actual bad sectors, the more likely you won't recover much. The last disk I tried to recover, roughly 25% bad sectors meant a filesystem that was basically beyond fsck's capability to fix. Also, if the disk is marginal, trying to read from it may increase the number of bad sectors if/when you decide to try doing more expensive hardware-based recovery. The first thing I'd try is to plug the disk in to a Linux box without any sort of automount utility running and try to read the first few sectors with dd. Bad sectors there = bad prognosis. No errors = try mounting the first partition, go from there. Errors = try dd_rescueing the partition to a known good disk so you have a copy, then run fsck or other tools on a copy of the copy. Simple to think about. More difficult to *DO* and get useful junk back.... -- Matt G / Dances With Crows The Crow202 Blog: http://crow202.org/wordpress/ There is no Darkness in Eternity/But only Light too dim for us to see --------------------------------------------------- PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss