Help: Dead Hard Drive

[DeeJayBump]

It appears that my HD just died. I've been running Mandrake 10.1, and had not backed up my files in to another drive or to another PC in my home network. I already tried to rescue this installation from the 10.1 dics, but it says that it cannot find my root device.

 

What I need to know is: Is there any way to recover Mandrake files from this drive once I install the new HD? Even though this drive will not boot, is there any piece of Mandrake software that will allow me to recover any files from this drive? Thanks for any help.

[Urza9814]

might be possible to just set it up as a second hard drive, but it might be fried...that happened to one of mine once...if that's the problem you might try the freezer trick...but that's all I can think of...might not be able to get it.

[DeeJayBump]

but it might be fried...that ..if that's the problem you might try the freezer trick...but that's all I can think of...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

What is the freezer trick? Thanks.

 

EDIT: WHat happend to HD quality? All of my previous drives that died at least limped along so that I could save any critical data before the drive stopped working completely. This one, however, appears to have just frozen up Mandrake 10.1 right in the middle of a program with no warning.

 

For my new drive, I'm getting one with a 3-year warranty so that at least if it fails at the same point in its lifetime as my current failed drive, I can still have it replaced by the manufacturer under warranty.

Edited January 24, 2005 by DeeJayBump

[kmc77]

I think he's referring to the trick where you put your HD in a ziplock baggie and stick in the freezer for a couple of hours. Then plug it back in. The principle being that, since the majority of HD failures are mechanical wear, the cold temperature might be able to shrink the metal so that the HD works for a short time. I've only had one HD failure, and the trick didn't work for me, but others have told me that they were able to recover some files for a short amount of time, so It may or may not work for you.

[DeeJayBump]

Thanks. I will try the freezer trick once my new drive arrives from ZipZoomFly. Thanks for the help.

[daniewicz]

You might want to consider the purchase of a UPS. I used to have a drive failure every 2 or 3 years. After I bought an APC UPS, my drives are much happier. Dirty power can kill hardware.

[Guest ptolemy]

ptolemy

 

Try a Mandrake Live CD. These are quite usful for recovering files from hard drives that have as much as 50% bad sectors and can no longer be read by an operating system. Has worked for me.

[bvc]

yeah, try a livecd first, there are several reasons the root partition may not be found and the hd may be fine. Have you tried another install? You can Ctrl+Alt+Delete anytime during an install to stop it so if you do it at the partitioning part and don't format nothing will be changed this way you can see if an OS is at least willing to attempt an install.

Edited January 26, 2005 by bvc