[nylug-talk] Dead hard drive

[Michael Bacarella]

On Wed, Jul 12, 2006 at 07:18:07PM -0400, Peter Jay Salzman wrote:
...
> I tried using dd_rescue to read the drive device (/dev/hdd) and it started
> to read the drive, however, I stopped it since my concern is that if the
> drive died due to a hard crash, whatever caused that crash may be doing more
> damage as the platters spin.  Perhaps that's even why that Windows program
> saw filenames and I can't with Linux.
> 
> Does NYLUG have installfests where I can take this drive and perhaps have
> another person look at it to give me a 2nd opinion?  I want to tell my
> friend the drive is toast, and if the Windows program works, buy it and use
> it.

Here's the second opinion: go tell your friend that he should've just
paid the money if he really needed the data back.  By taking you up
on your offer, his data is probably that much closer to being
irrecoverable.

> But I'd like to get a 2nd opinion before I admit I couldn't do
> something with Linux that he could do with Windows.  Rubs me the wrong
> way.

What rubs me the wrong way is someone trying to get a highly specialized
computer service that can run thousands of dollars per recovery done
for free by playing on people's OS insecurities.