HD parameters incorrect

SlowCoder · 02-21-2010, 06:14 PM

I have a friend's hard drive, a WD WD5000AAVS 500GB hard drive. One day it failed, hardware not seen by OS, and she hadn't made backups of 5 years worth of data. Ouch. Don't worry, I've coached her on importance of backing up.

She happened to have another hard drive of the same model available. I took the breadboard from the working hard drive and installed. Now the PC sees the hardware, but no partition data. I realize the data may be corrupt, but I still want to do my best.

Here are the parameters from various utilities from the working drive, which I'm guessing the nonworking drive should match:

Code:

#hdparm -g sdb
 geometry      = 60801/255/63, sectors = 976773168, start = 0
 
#gpart -i sdb
 Possible partition(DOS FAT), size(476937mb), offset(0mb)
 
#testdisk /dev/sdb
 Disk /dev/sdb - 500 GB / 465 GiB - WD 5000AAV External
 
#fdisk -l sdb

Disk sdb: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x44fdfe06

Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
  sdb1               1       60801   488384001    c  W95 FAT32 (LBA)

Here are results for the nonworking drive:

Code:

#hdparm -g sdb
geometry      = 0/64/32, sectors = 4294967296, start = 0

#gpart -i sdb
*** Fatal error: cannot get sector size on dev(sdb).

#testdisk /dev/sdb
Disk /dev/sdb - 2199 GB / 2048 GiB - WD

So, from this data, are there still possibilities, or is the drive fragged?

michaelk · 02-23-2010, 04:21 AM

You might of damaged the controller board when swapping units, the drives are not 100% compatible, or it is fragged. There are companies that specialize in data recovery but they are very expensive. Can you tell if the drive is spinning?

GlennsPref · 02-23-2010, 04:43 AM

Hi, data recovery is expensive if you go to the profesionals.

But with GNU/Linux the tools are available.

Theres a couple I have used for different jobs.

Testdisk/photorec

and dd_rhelp/dd_rescue.

Aside from that, Have you just tried to scandisk/fsck the disk to find the parameters of the data and write them to the filesystem table?

IMHO, the board from one drive may be a different firmware revision, but you may be able to copy the data off to another drive with dd_rhelp.

web-search these tools. They're really popular. (ie, sourceforge)

regards Glenn

ps, you do need to be aware of static discharge when hacking stuff.

did you know, if you can feel a static discharge, it's over 2500 volts? No current, but it's more than enough to blow 12 and 5 volt zenner diodes (used for voltage regulation) Meaning you can damage electronics (cmos) with out realising it.

H_TeXMeX_H · 02-23-2010, 04:55 AM

The sizes don't look right, so it's probably a bad drive, but I suggest you try to make an image using ddrescue, then use testdisk or foremost to recover whatever you can. That's the best you can do without professional equipment.

GlennsPref · 02-23-2010, 05:12 AM

Before Linux, there were only professional equipment.

of course, it was mostly Window$ based recovery. One cost above another.

For private data, it's un-economical to use they're services.

see how you go./ Glenn

SlowCoder · 02-23-2010, 12:07 PM

Thanks guys. I know it's not a bad controller because I can put it back on the good drive and use it. And while I was "hacking" I took precautions against static. Any damage happened before I got it.

Firmware ... I'll have to check that as a possibility.