[SGVLUG] recommendations on local (Pasadena) data restoration services?

[Bryan Backer]

As you can tell by the subject line, this is a tale of woe.

I just tried to use a Knoppix 5.0.1 liveCD to read data off an
unreponsive Win2000 box, but Knoppix has read errors on
the hard drive and won't/can't detect the filesystem
type, so cannot mount it.

The Win2000 box in question is from my wife's business
and worked fine until a couple days
ago when it gave the dreaded 'disk read error, press
cntl-alt-delete'.  There are some backups, but they're
somewhat old, so we'd like to, if possible, retrieve as
much as possible from the disk before scratch installing
the OS (on a new disk).

So here are the questions:

1) has anybody had luck with any liveCD Linux distributions
(or other rescue liveCDs) that include tools to deduce and
reconstruct files from the disk (NTFS, I believe) if
linux sees read errors on blocks 1 and 2? I've seen
mention of tools that could, given time, grind through
disks and attempt to locate some portions of the
files even if the boot blocks or disk indicies or
whatever were gone, but those tools won't be standard
issue on liveCDs meant for general desktop use.


2) if nobody has leads there, does anybody know some
decent local data retrieval service that can attempt
to raise the dead (disk)? I'm in Pasadena, so
extra points for somebody close.


3) Is this a FAQ for our local LUG? I've been watching the
traffic for a few years now but if we covered this, I
don't have any of the info saved...



As an aside, I was very impressed with this latest Knoppix
5.0.1 liveCD - I've used mostly Mandrake or RedHat in the past
but not as a liveCD. In other circumstances, I'd be
giving this a longer testdrive (on a faster machine), but
that will have to wait until this problem is resolved.

thanks in advance for any leads!
Bryan

-- bbacker at mail.yahoo.com