Recovering a fried hard disk - is it possible?
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| techiem2 Dec 23, 2006 8:48 AM EDT |
One of my friends just got back from six months in South Africa, and sometime near the end his laptop died on him. I'm pretty sure the laptop is physically dead (no signs of power [including leds] whatsoever with battery or power cord [I even tried a different power cord just in case]), so I pulled out the hard disk and hooked it up to my ide-usb adapter. dmesg shows the drive being connected, but doesn't see that there's any partitions and never even gets to the point of created a /dev/ entry for the disk. It just gives i/o errors and such. Is there any hope? (I tried plugging it into a winders box just for laughs and it basically did the same thing. Said it detected a disk and then just sat there looking at it. hehe) |
| Abe Dec 23, 2006 2:10 PM EDT |
I had a similar problem with my laptop with the same behavior. It is IBM T42. I tried everything but still didn't start. What I did is removed the battery out of the laptop for overnight. In the morning, it booted fine. Some times the T4* series get locked up and the only way you can get it to power again is to discharge the computer (there is a button (F10 i think) that might do that too). If it doesn't work, I suggest you use Knoppix to boot from CD and check the HD again. You didn't specify which distro you are using. If it is K/Ubuntu, it might not detect a FRiser. Try Knoppix or some other distro like Mepis or PCLinuxOS. Hopefully it didn't get wiped up when you plugged it into Windows. |
| pat Dec 23, 2006 8:56 PM EDT |
I've heard good things about this: http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk Haven't had a hardrive that I've needed to use it on. |
| techiem2 Dec 24, 2006 5:29 AM EDT |
Thanks. I'll try leaving the battery out for a while and see if that helps. I only had it pulled for a minute while I tested with power cable only to see if that's what was broken. I'm running gentoo on my box. It knew there was a disk hooked up, but just got IO errors and never saw the partition(s) or created a /dev/ entry for the disk itself. Windows never got past the hardware detection to make the disk show up either. I'll take a look at testdisk too and see if it can do anything. I can always hook the disk directly into a box instead of going through USB. The really strange thing is, our missionary friend called and said he is having a similar problem (but his lights at least turn on when he holds down the power button. hehe), so we are wondering if something power related happened before they left. Though the older laptop my brother was using there seems fine. |
| techiem2 Dec 26, 2006 6:49 AM EDT |
Well, pulling the battery out overnight fixed the laptop.
Thanks guys.
Of course now I'm wondering if my ide-usb cable or the 2.5"-3.5" adapter card with it is flaky since I couldn't read the hard disk when I had it pulled, but that's another issue (and the things are only $20, so that can be easily replaced with a newer shinier model. hehe). Mark II |
| jimf Dec 26, 2006 6:57 AM EDT |
All batteries have a limited life. I actually run mine On AC whenever I can. Be aware that power adapters are available for most laptops at radioshack for about half the price of OEM. |
| Abe Dec 26, 2006 7:54 AM EDT |
[Quoting:Well, pulling the battery out overnight fixed the laptop. Thanks guys. Quoting:All batteries have a limited lifeAlthough this true, I don't think you have a bad battery. I think what happened is when the laptop was powered down or unplugged, an electric surge created/stored high capacitance in the laptop electronics or relevant components and wouldn't discharge to normal as long as it keeps getting power. These things happen in the winter time when there is lots of static especially in dry air. Leaving the battery out seems to get the trick done. Such things are supposed to happen "ONLY" in older electronics, but what do we know? Glad it worked for you too. |
| techiem2 Dec 26, 2006 7:55 AM EDT |
Yeah. The machine worked fine running on battery when I put it back in. I'm guessing he took a nasty power surge and had some current wandering around in the laptop messing it up. I've seen it happen to desktops after storms around here (good old PA), but hadn't seen it happen in a laptop before. I also run mine on AC whenever I can. Why use the battery when there's a perfectly good outlet nearby (and I have an inline surge protector on my power cable just in case)? |
| jimf Dec 26, 2006 8:20 AM EDT |
> an inline surge protector on my power cable just in case Always! I found myself in a situation where I went from home to the office and it was easier to just get another AC power supply. As a result, I actually use the laptop very little in battery mode. Of course that's just me, and, I realize that some actually use a laptop in other situations :) |
| Abe Dec 26, 2006 8:24 AM EDT |
Quoting:Why use the battery when there's a perfectly good outlet nearbyGood practice. I do the same. But it still happens with laptops more than desktop because, If you notice, desktop power plugs have three wires (one is ground) the laptop has two wires making laptops more vulnerable to surges. |
| jimf Dec 26, 2006 8:30 AM EDT |
> laptop has two wires My Compaq PS has 3... |
| Abe Dec 26, 2006 8:36 AM EDT |
Quoting:My Compaq PS has 3...Yeah, that is because they have DEC (Digital Equip. Corp) engineers who were the best. Man, I miss the Alpha. Hopefully not for long. My next pet project is to get Linux running on an old DS-10 server which I acquired for free. |
| jimf Dec 26, 2006 9:16 AM EDT |
Well, it's a presario 1500, one of the last before they sold out to HP.... I hear that the current ones are pretty bad. |
| cr Dec 26, 2006 10:01 AM EDT |
When you turn off a laptop machine, all you do is shut down the main (x86) CPU system. The keyboard controller in a laptop is a more powerful microcontroller than the lowly 8042 seen in an AT-style machine (even the one embedded in a SuperIO chip), and, because it has stuff to do while the power's out, it stays powered as long as there's any power source for the machine. It supervises battery charging, after all, along with handling, basically, every other hardware job in a laptop that's over and above what a desktop machine has going on. It's the guy your finger talks to when it pushes the main power button. It's also somewhat easy to confuse with out-of-spec power rails, especially the Phoenix-programmed M38s commonly used in laptops (they buy a Phoenix BIOS and get a cheap KBC along with it). I have a laptop with an aged-and-infirm battery (recipe for soft power rails right there). Sometimes it balks at just having a PCcard network interface plugged in while the power's "off". The only way to reset that MCU is to take the battery out and hit the power button, so it depletes whatever's in the capacitors... assuming it's in the mood to notice that button in the first place; if not, wait ten minutes. |
| Abe Dec 26, 2006 1:47 PM EDT |
Quoting:I hear that the current ones are pretty bad.I should have said "...Because they HAD DEC engineers" instead. Most of the DEC guys became Intel employees as part of the deal Compaq had with Intel when they sold the Alpha Engineering group. The rest of the good ones went to AMD and they are the reason AMD's processors gotten much better, especially the 64 bit ones. |
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