use master hd to retrieve files from broken slave hd??

Iltbreg · 12-20-2006, 09:57 AM

Yeah, there's definitely something wrong with the RAM because memtest86+ shows a lot of errors and many are about 'badram'. I'll try to fix that.

farslayer · 12-20-2006, 07:21 PM

Ifyou have more than one stick of Memory you can pull one and test, then swap them and test again.. it might just be one stick that is bad..

Iltbreg · 01-07-2007, 08:11 AM

I confirm it's bad RAM. I have a single stick (can't have more than one due to the fact that I only have one functional socket on that motherboard) so I had it changed and now I can make distros work in graphical mode!

Now I think I'll try to tinker in that HD with Helix, see if one of those forensic tools can help.

BTW, I'm very sorry but there's something I failed to mention before. The day the computer crashed, FC5, unable to boot anymore, gave me a message suggesting I repair the corrupt sectors on the HD. I don't remember wich command it suggested me to do but I think it was something like fsck. I remember that "repair" took a long time to comlpete. Anyway, all that is to say that I may unknowingly have destroyed the data on it right at the beginning.

I'll see what I can do now. If I can retrieve it, good; if I can't, too bad. The stuff is not that important but some of it has become very hard to find now.

Happy New Year Everybody!

farslayer · 01-07-2007, 01:11 PM

glad you were able to locate the problem, and yes trying to fix errors when the system is introducing more errors because of the faulty memory may very well have destroyed more information on the system.

best of luck in your recovery efforts.

Iltbreg · 01-07-2007, 02:30 PM

ALRIGHT!! Problem solved!!!

As haertig the wise suggested: "Try the simple steps first", so I did. I decided to remove my new HD, put back the "broken" one as the master HD without any slave and start the computer to check if FC5 that's installed on that HD would still be running now that the RAM has been repaired. Guess what, it's still running like a charm and absolutely all my data is there and intact.

I can't thank you all enough for your precious help and advice. Thank you, thank you, thank you haertig, syg00, pixellany and a huge thank you to you farslayer for spotting the bug! You guys are the best!!!