[Nottingham] Computer woes--knacked IDE disk recovery

Paul Sladen nottingham at mailman.lug.org.uk
Thu Jun 5 11:54:01 2003


On Thu, 5 Jun 2003, Alex Walker wrote:
> hdd: dma_intr: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
> dma_intr: error=0x40 { UncorrectableError }, LBAsect=45097371, sector=2621448
> end_request: I/O error, cmd 0 dev 16:4b (hdd), sector 2621448

Hopefully it's only doing retries.  I'd try and move stuff--You will need a
hard disk that is bigger, or the same size.

Try `dd'ing the raw data of the disk to the new disk, hopefully you maybe
able to get most stuff across and from that point you can mount the whole
lot on the new disk.

There are even-lower-level tools for ripping the raw data off below the
error-correction layer that takes place in the drive by sending loads of raw
IDE commands.  I know nothing about this...

I would be relying on the first working (dd'ing) and then heading and
hunting out my backups;  (no, don't bother to backup 60GB, just back up the
25MB of financial accounts and emails from your girlfriend that really
matter!  (*cough*, the large photo attachments are up to you... ;-)

Rsync is your friend for doing a weekly backup, or tar+gz+gpg it if you
don't trust people on the machine you are copying it to--but remember to
copy over your private keys to decrypt it to too!

Hope that helps,

	-Paul  ;-)
-- 
War is inconsistent with Truth.  Nottingham, GB