FC6 Recue Disk - HD troubles, advice needed

kepitemp · #1 26th November 2006, 04:52 PM

Hi,

My 300gb drive has been make some clicking noises and now it won't book FSCK kicks in and it locks up at 10% when the system is booted. I boot up the FC6 rescue disk and I can mount the troubled disk no problem and see the files that I want to get off the system. I'd like to use my usb flash drive to offline some of the critical files. Fortunately there is not much that I need to get off there maybe 1gig worth.

What is the best way to recover some files from FC6 when the drive most likely has bad sectors. Ideally I'd like to copy them off to a usb flash via fc6 rescue disk. I've tried booting the rescue disk with the usb drive plugged in and I see it loaded the driver for removable storage but I fail to see a usb drive to mount. Maybe I'm missing something.

Could someone kindly make some recommendations for me here. Thanks again!

tomcat · #2 26th November 2006, 05:06 PM

If your drive does some clicking sounds repeatedly, it is nearing death! The sound is caused be the head crashing on the disk.

I would boot with a live-CD immediately, mount the defect drive and copy all data over to a USB stick or another harddisk or something like that. If the harddisk refuses to get mounted or quits working while copying files, unplug it, put it in a plastic bag, close it thoroughly, then put it in the freezer for two hours. Reboot the system with the live-cd, get the frozen disk out again, connect it quickly to the computer, mount it and copy over as much data as you can before it completely dies. Freezing the drive is a last-resort measure to expand the life-expectancy of a harddisk for a couple of minutes.

PS: Removable devices are usually mounted at /media. USB devices can be located with /sbin/lsusb.

kepitemp · #3 26th November 2006, 06:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tomcat

If your drive does some clicking sounds repeatedly, it is nearing death! The sound is caused be the head crashing on the disk.

I would boot with a live-CD immediately, mount the defect drive and copy all data over to a USB stick or another harddisk or something like that. If the harddisk refuses to get mounted or quits working while copying files, unplug it, put it in a plastic bag, close it thoroughly, then put it in the freezer for two hours. Reboot the system with the live-cd, get the frozen disk out again, connect it quickly to the computer, mount it and copy over as much data as you can before it completely dies. Freezing the drive is a last-resort measure to expand the life-expectancy of a harddisk for a couple of minutes.

PS: Removable devices are usually mounted at /media. USB devices can be located with /sbin/lsusb.

Which live cd do you recommend? I've tried knoppix 5.0 but it see the drive but doesn't recognize the filesystem. I've got the FC6 live cd but not sure how to mount the drive correctly from the live cd.

Using the fc6 rescue cd I don't see a /media. I'll try the /sbin/lsusb to see what I get.

Thanks.

greno · #4 26th November 2006, 06:40 PM

What make and model of drive do you have? Most of mine are Hitachi and they have a drive tools kit that you can download and run against their drives that will give you some information. Maybe other manufacturers have something similar. The clicking you hear is the drive reseeking trying to read a bad track or sector. Generally the drives just mark bad sectors and move data around to avoid them. Sometimes these drives will run out of spare sectors and then they are dead. That has probably happened to your drive. I have rehabilitated many of these 'bad' drives by performing a low-level format of the drive. This lays down new tracks/sectors and new sector table. These high capacity drives are writing at such densities that it's no wonder they write some bad sectors every once in a while.

As far as getting your files off, I would just setup networking once booted from the rescue cd and ftp your files to another machine.

Good luck.

kepitemp · #5 26th November 2006, 06:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by greno

What make and model of drive do you have?

As far as getting your files off, I would just setup networking once booted from the rescue cd and ftp your files to another machine.

Good luck.

Maxtor 300gig SATA drive. The FTP idea sounds great only if I could get it to work. How do I get ftp running under the FC6 rescue cd? Any help here is appreciated!

Thanks.

kepitemp · #6 26th November 2006, 07:25 PM

thanks for all your help guys. I was able to get my data off. My problem was that I was mounting the drive as read only and naturally /media mount point would not work. I was able to get my stuff over to my 4 gig usb flash and was also able to start samba to copy it off on the network. Man I'm relieved. Thanks again! This is the second time I've heard clicking from the drive. I ran it trhough spinrite 6 and it came up clean the first time. There is something definately intermittent and wrong with this 300gig drive. Time to ship it back, no drive should click like that. Trouble is that it rarely ever happens but it has stung me twice.

***Dan*** · #7 26th November 2006, 07:52 PM

Hi kepitemp,

Oh Yeah! Hard drives don't heal. Maxtor needs to get that one back with a nasty note! But the reason I posted was to recommend the Xubuntu Live CD, and / or the PCLinuxOS Live CD. I keep a copy of the Gparted live CD and the Mandriva One 2006 Live CD around too.

Dan

tomcat · #8 26th November 2006, 08:39 PM

I usually have one Kanotix, one DSL and one Mandriva-ONE CD around in case I run into problems.

Glad that you could save your data in time.