I/O Errors on HDD
 

My fathers HDD (40Gb IBM Deskstar) recently "failed" (ie Windows could not see nor read it) after a period of it sometimes being there, other times not. It had been making chirping and clicking sounds for the same period of time. Unfortunately he didn't see this as a sign of imminent failure and didn't back up any of the data on it.

I now have it plugged into my Linux system and I have found the following:

During bootup I get "Buffer I/O error on /dev/hdb device block 0" and it goes through to 5 I believe.
fdisk cannot read the drive to print the parition details.
fsck.vfat (as it has FAT32 parititons) reports I/O errors.
Attempts to mount it and mount as readonly also report I/O errors.

The HDD itself is not important but is it possible to recover the data from it?

hi there,
i don't want to be the pessimist guy but i would start the preparation for the burial ceremony.
imho, and also some personal experience, fdisk is the last resource.
if you can't read a hd with fdisk, no chance. i never got back.
i thought i should share that with you.
sorry
regards,
slackie1000

Same experience here. If you can't read the drive, there is no
way you'll retrieve the data. If it's important enough, and he
wants to spend big money, there are professional data
recovery specialists.

Seems like the partiton table is damaged. As others said, there is little chnace of fixing this without paying some money to a professional.

There are companies/people who specialise in fixing things like this for some money, doing a search on Google should bring up some results.

http://www.dataclinic.co.uk/data-rec...disk-drive.htm

The sound the HDD makes is neither of the sounds on this site (which my Dad found). It's more of a very quiet scraping noise without the clicks.

I doubt it's the partition table or a fix would be simple (use dd to overwrite it and then use something to reconstruct it or simply recover the data such as Easy Recovery, which doesn't work BTW), seems to be more of a hardware failure such as the read/write headers failing or scratching across the surface of the disk... *cringes at the thought*

I had to have a new WD800JB replaced yesterday, because it
failed. Acutally, I had errors during my first install of Slackware
but thought it was my CDs. It finally hung the box, and was
making a soft 'chick-a chick-a chick' type of sound. Western
Digital's diagnostic software wouldn't even run on the drive,
and I just exchanged it. This type of failure is usually physical
and beyond anything such as Easy Recovery, as you found.

You might want to help your Dad with a good backup plan once
you get a new drive.

Edit: The drive was only 6 days old, but did have errors
when I first got it. I just didn't test it then.

Windows Puts Linux To Shame (regarding this anyway)
 

My dad found some recovery software that can read the drive, also gets the data back fine. It runs in Windows. I'm quite shocked that Linux refuses to let me tamper with the drive due to I/O errors when Windows will ignore them and let me get on with it. I think thats 1 up to Windows.

I'm not sure why windows would read the disc and linux wouldn't. I have a disc at home that does the same thing(You can have it if you want...lol) that I took out of my sisters windows laptop. It wouldn't boot or anything. I ended up using a damn small linux cd to boot up the laptop, I was then able to copy the data over my network, to another computer. Seems strange if windows can use it. I would still get everything you want to keep off of that disc.

Hmm how to explain it. Windows cannot read the disc "normally" (ie it isn't in explorer or have a drive letter etc.) but recovery software can read it.

Linux just says "I/O Error" any attempt to do anything with the drive (mount, dd, fdisk). I'm now trying to get dd to dump the drive into a file while ignoring the very first part of the disk (which is what I believe the error is coming from). However, I can't remember what I need on the command line to skip without reading. Can anyone enlighten me?

I entered
and no I/O error was reported and recover.iso is increasing in size and the drive is not making any strange sounds so it looks like I'm making some kind of progress!

you used the link i posted for instructions?
cool, glad it's working

I'm actually not so sure it's working, even though it's on 3GB now. The drive I'm trying to dd from just powered down... that can't be good...

Re: Windows Puts Linux To Shame (regarding this anyway)
 

Check out ddrescue

How long have you been messing with it? for a while? maybe leave it alone for a while and let it cool down.