Force disk recognition

wrinkledcheese · 01-30-2012, 09:24 AM

Hello all,

I have a suspected failed drive and I want to recover as much data from it as possible. I planned on using dd or something along those lines to recover the data.

The errors I'm getting in dmesg are as follows:

Code:

[435447.712042] ata1.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x6 frozen
[435447.712050] ata1.00: failed command: READ DMA EXT
[435447.712060] ata1.00: cmd 25/00:08:9f:6e:59/00:00:14:00:00/e0 tag 0 dma 4096 in
[435447.712062]          res 40/00:00:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/00 Emask 0x4 (timeout)
[435447.712066] ata1.00: status: { DRDY }
[435452.761017] ata1: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0)
[435453.424024] ata1: soft resetting link
[435453.620416] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133
[435453.620431] ata1.00: device reported invalid CHS sector 0
[435453.620451] ata1: EH complete

The drive makes a clicking sounds but it looks to me as if the drive itself isn't able to read the platters. If I listen to the drive when I hot-plug it into the sata power cable, there is a faint clicking sound, a pause and then again. A longer pause and a repeat of the previous clicking sounds and then the drive just stops. I don't feel and movement in the drive as if the platters are spinning or the heads are moving. I suspect the heads are moving, the clicking, but I don't feel that force that is customary with a set of spinning platters.

The drive has been removed from an external enclosure once it has failed.

What I'm looking for a is a method to read anything possible from the drive that I can based on the port the drive is plugged into on the motherboard.

TobiSGD · 01-30-2012, 11:06 AM

Simple as that: If the platters aren't spinning you will not be able to read anything.
If there is important data on the disk I hope you have a backup, otherwise you have to go to a data recovery company and that can be quite expensive.

H_TeXMeX_H · 01-30-2012, 11:27 AM

I would use ddrescue if the drive is detected. If it it is not detected at all then it's dead. There is the freezer trick, but there are mixed results with it. If you had really important data on it you should have it recovered professionally (expensive).