Re: [gentoo-user] Re: USB Disk failure - Buffer I/O error on device sda2, logical block 1289 lost page write due to I/O error on sda2

[Mick <michaelkintzios@gmail.com>]

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On Sunday 10 October 2010 04:58:04 Fatih Tümen wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 10, 2010 at 12:15 AM, walt <w41ter@gmail.com> wrote:

> > Will fdisk read and recognize the partition table on the USB disk? If
> > fdisk results in disk read errors then I'd begin to think more about
> > 'hardware' :(
> 
> No "Unable to read /dev/sda" is what fdisk says. I never had a disk
> (hardware) failure before. Is there no way to extract data from it?

The noise you're describing is indicative of mechanical failure.

Unless your PC can access the drive (dmesg will show what the kernel sees) 
then there is no easy way of getting the data out of it.

I have heard of people opening the USB enclosure of external drives and 
removing the drive, which they then installed in a laptop.  However, these 
were cases where the USB controller was faulty, rather than the moving 
elements of the drive itself.

If you had access to a forensics lab you could even take the platters out of 
the drive itself and read them on platter reader.  On the other hand, if you 
only had ccache, distfiles and packages a resync with a new external drive 
will get you a working system again.

Before you head for the shops you would at least want to try another USB cable 
as Walter suggested, just in case.
-- 
Regards,
Mick

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