Re: [gentoo-user] OT: hard disk access and recovery impossible under linux ?

[Joshua Murphy <poisonbl@gmail.com>]

On Sat, Jul 31, 2010 at 12:14 PM, Mick <michaelkintzios@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Saturday 31 July 2010 16:33:18 Dale wrote:
>> Kacper Kopczyński wrote:
>> > Dnia 2010-07-31, o godz. 16:15:51
>> >
>> > Volker Armin Hemmann<volkerarmin@googlemail.com>  napisał(a):
>> >> On Samstag 31 Juli 2010, Kacper Kopczyński wrote:
>> >>> Hi,
>> >>>
>> >>> My problem is really strange - I can't access my hard drive from
>> >>> linux, but it works from windows without problems. It has some bad
>> >>> blocks.
>> >>
>> >> it has a lot of bad blocks and a fucked up firmware it seems. No way
>> >> it is working 'without problems'.
>> >
>> > Well total space taken by bad blocks according to chkdsk is less than
>> > 1MB, windows is still able to access all data. Linux is only able to
>> > see partition table "for a while" - as you can see in dmesg.
>> >
>> > If firmware is broken then how it is possible that windows is able to
>> > use this disk?
>>
>> Maybe windoze is ignoring the problem?  It's not like windoze has never
>> done that before right?
>>
>> Just a thought.
>
> Couldn't it be that the MSWindows partition has no bad blocks, while Linux
> does?
>
> --
> Regards,
> Mick
>

Not likely, though just looking at *how* it fails, if the data'd not
already been backed up, I'd hold at least a little hope that it's not
really a problem with the on-disk data, aside from what's been
corrupted since the problems started, but rather just the controller
and firmware. If I had a spare drive from the same batch, I'd swap in
the not-dying controller card and see if that got me anywhere. Since
the drive's already backed up, though... that one's a new paperweight
for the desk, and if the data's anything sensitive, physical
destruction of the drive's the way I'd go to 'secure' it before it
goes out with the trash.

-- 
Poison [BLX]
Joshua M. Murphy