[OT - IT] hard drive in death throws

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yello

Guest
The hard drive in my laptop is just about poked. I can't boot from in but I can boot from an install cd (Ubuntu) and see it, browse some folders etc.... but my /home directory is rogered. (I don't have the available partition space to run a dd_rescue, btw)

My thinking is to get another drive, reload Ubuntu and rebuild my home directory from recent back ups.

But does anyone know if I can plug the knackered drive in as a secondary external drive (maybe via USB???) and access it? My backups are a few weeks old and there's a couple of files I'd like to try and recover.
 
Look for a hard drive copy utility. I used one called HD clone, the free version.

You need the old hard disk and a new one, which to work with the free version, must be physically bigger than the old disk (i.e. old one 20GB new one 60GB).

You create a boot CD which examines your system and then prompts you what kind of copy you want to do.

I copied my failing 80GB to a new disk. No need for any re-building, though a defrag was essential.
 

domtyler

Über Member
Just buy an external usb enclosure Yello and you can plus it in later. There are programs out there that can recover files from drives that have gone through a blender for a fee, check out Stellar Phoenix which is the best I have used.
 
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yello

Guest
domtyler said:
Just buy an external usb enclosure.

That's kind of what I hoped existed! I'll do a few googles...

Just to re-iterate, I have a unix system (Ubuntu) and I there is a unix disk recovery program available. I just need the extra space to run it.
 

Carwash

Señor Member
Location
Visby
What dom said. I just bought one of these (similar situation to yours actually), £15 from dabs, job's a good'un. ;)
 

peanut

Guest
if you can boot from a CD then you can definitely get your files off.
I suggest you get an external drive as Noods says

or buy a USB IDE /laptop cable and plug your laptop drive into any PC or laptop and you will be ableto drag and drop your files off onto the host computer.
ebay item No 280275263457

The easiest way to install a new drive normally is to clone a bootable copy off onto the replacement drive. Norton Ghost is one Drive Copy is another program you can use.You boot from the CD and run ghost with both drives attached .

I would suggest that before you abandon your existing drive try to boot to into safe mode by hitting the F8 key repeatedly whilst it is booting. If you get to safe mode try to restore your hard drive to a previous date when it last worked perfectly say a week or two back.
Then reboot
 

Carwash

Señor Member
Location
Visby
peanut said:
...Norton Ghost is one Drive Copy is another...

Not sure either of them support ext3.

peanut said:
I would suggest that before you abandon your existing drive try to boot to into safe mode by hitting the F8 key repeatedly whilst it is booting.

The OP is running Ubuntu.
 
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yello

Guest
yello said:
Just to re-iterate, I have a unix system (Ubuntu).

;)
 

bonj2

Guest
if you try and install a usb hard drive like others have said, then you're likely to run into problems as it'll need some drivers which you'll have to download yourself and compile yourself. You'll also have to download the program to compile the script that performs the process to prepare your computer for being able to run the program to generate the makefile to compile the driver.
You'll then have to run that program, and generate the makefile, and then IF all that works, you'll have to execute the makefile to compile the driver, which has a 99% chance of taking about 15 minutes thus leading you to believe that it's working and then stopping having printed a load of errors to the console. The chances of it having been completely successful are precisely nil, but it will leave you completely unsure of whether the compilation process has been successful enough to perform the job that you want it to do.
Prepare to then spend at least 24 hours non-stop trawling geekbloks for information on how to get the driver to 'associate' itself with the usb hard drive, and how to get it to 'see' its drivers, as getting it to see them automatically might violate some unknown moral principle something to do with the remote possibility that you might not want to choose some other drivers over the ones you've just spent ages compiling.
If all that works, then you have about a 1% chance of the drivers actually working without requiring some other library the compilation process for which is equally as difficult, and which may very well lead to a chain reaction of dependencies which may never end.
After all that, you'll probably find that all the information on the hard drive is gobbledegook anyway.

just bin off linux and get a proper operating system. It's written by tree hugging hippies in their spare time which is largely the reason why it's shite.
 

Carwash

Señor Member
Location
Visby
bonj said:
if you try and install a usb hard drive like others have said, then you're likely to run into problems as it'll need some drivers which you'll have to download yourself and compile yourself.

Things have progressed somewhat since 1998, bonj! I'm pretty sure that most Linux liveCDs will let you mount volumes over USB.
 

peanut

Guest
yello said:

Oops didn't notice the OS
However it makes no difference to Ghost it will still clone whatever is on the drive to another drive. Not sure if you can use a USB external drive or cable to connect to a windoze PC.

why the hell do you want to use such a piece of carp is beyond me. Its not compatable with anything.
 
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