Hi, how you doing?

Ok, here is the deal:
Got a laptop here from a client, he says hd is kaput!!

I boot with Live Ubuntu CD.
Run the command parted, which gives: Using /dev/sda.
But, when I ask for partitions with command "print", it comes back and says, "Error: /dev/sda: unrecognised disk label"
Trying to "check 1" , i.e. check the first partition takes forever..., but finally comes back with the same error, unrecognised disk label.....

Gparted scans for devices and cannot locate any.

I tried to mount /dev/sda1 on /mnt/windows, nada.
It says: "mount: special device /dev/sda1 does not exist."
If I can only mount it, then I can run dd for a rawimage, and scalpel or foremost the image and recover the files.

Does anyone have suggestions on how to proceed?

Sincerely,

Hector3rd

use parted magic/system rescue cd

testdisk

Ok, I booted with the systemrescue cd, but in the console I keep getting output that the SCSI dev, blablabla, how do I turn OFF this or send it to /dev/zero?????
Every console I go to, it bothers me.

Thanks!!

Hector3rd

Issue the "reset" command in the console, now I am running testdisk anlyse disk, and it says /dev/hda - 121MB, no partitions, and that the partition sector does not have the "ENDMARK 0xAA55"
When I press on proceed, it returns with a "Structure: Ok."
I cannot load the partition from backup, there isn't any.
I don't want to add a partition, because that will erase data I guess.

When I execute "testdisk /list" it gives the same result above, no endmark....

Suggestions??


Thanks.

Hector

First, before you do anything with your HDD, make a backup copy of it. e.g., insert another HDD of greater size and do something like this:
where /dev/sda is your faulty drive, path after of= is the path where you want to place backup. bs=16M makes dd copy data in blocks of 16MiB to increase speed.

Only after having a backup copy you should proceed in trying to rescue data.

You don't have to mount a drive to make a raw image of it.

Once you've created the image as suggested by 183 above, is it mountable with QEMU?

Yes, its true, I'm sorry, you DON'T have to mount to do a dd for a rawimage.

I did try to use the "dd" command, but its says no such file or directory. I think the hard disk is gone.

Unless there is something else that I can try....

In any case, thank you so much for your help, corrections, and suggestions.

As always, thanks a bunch!!!


Sincerely,

Hector3rd