[SGVLUG] Harddrive Recovery Firms

[Mic Chow]

The version of Spinrite that I have does not recognize the damaged
drive.  I am pretty sure this is because the motherboard can not
recognize that there is a drive connected; again I have it connected via
ATA/IDE instead of USB.  I have retried leaving the damaged drive
connected on the ATA/IDE connector and booting from a Live CD of Knoppix
5.01.  This time even the kernel can not recognize the drive.  dmesg
shows nothing, qparted shows nothing, and neither does sfdisk.

Am I down to the expensive option?


Mic
North Hollywood, CA
N34° 8'33.02"
W118° 21'39.62"

Mic Chow wrote:
> Before posting to the SGVLUG list, I connected it via USB and got those
> fdisk and qparted results.  However, I will try again to connect the
> damaged drive to the ATA/IDE connector.  When I tried the Fujisu tools
> on Ultimate Boot CD 4.11, it do not find any drive.  I expected this
> because the damaged drive is not detected by the motherboard's BIOS even
> though it is on the ATA/IDE connector.  Will Spinrite even work if the
> motherboard's BIOS does not even see the drive?
> 
> 
> Mic
> North Hollywood, CA
> N34° 8'33.02"
> W118° 21'39.62"
> 
> Claude Felizardo wrote:
>> IIRC, Spinrite will not recognize drives via USB.  I'm guessing you
>> only have the one ATA/IDE port in the laptop so you'll have to use
>> another computer which means you'll need an ATA/IDE to laptop drive
>> adapter (can't remember what it's called).   Did you try running fdisk
>> in non interactive mode?
>>
>> Oh, according to wikipedia, there's a newer version that can read USB
>> drives and it can run via CDROM.  It's been quite a while since I've
>> used it so i must have used a really old version.  The article also
>> mentions a few alternatives you might want to investigate.
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinrite
>>
>> claude
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 8:36 PM, BlankReg <BlankReg at earthlink.net> wrote:
>>> I would just try spinrite first. If you think the system can see the drive
>>>  at all use that first. Then spend the big money.
>>>
>>>  =====================================
>>>
>>>
>>>  It is not even being detected by the BIOS anymore.  Physically, I can
>>>  hear the drive spinning, but I can not hear the read/write head move.
>>>
>>>
>>> Interestingly enough sfdisk does give me something.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> If I read this right, the electronics on the hard drive seems to be
>>>  working right, or at least as far as the kernel can see it does.
>>>  However, it can not see the platters, or the data on the platters.
>>
> 
>