something to try looking at if you want a possible in house solution is Test Disk, this is a satisfyingly functional program. http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk On Wed, Oct 5, 2011 at 2:08 PM, Matt Graham wrote: > 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 > -- A mouse trap, placed on top of your alarm clock, will prevent you from rolling over and going back to sleep after you hit the snooze button. Stephen --------------------------------------------------- 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