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On Sunday 10 October 2010 04:58:04 Fatih Tümen wrote: |
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> On Sun, Oct 10, 2010 at 12:15 AM, walt <w41ter@×××××.com> wrote: |
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> > Will fdisk read and recognize the partition table on the USB disk? If |
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> > fdisk results in disk read errors then I'd begin to think more about |
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> > 'hardware' :( |
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> |
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> No "Unable to read /dev/sda" is what fdisk says. I never had a disk |
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> (hardware) failure before. Is there no way to extract data from it? |
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The noise you're describing is indicative of mechanical failure. |
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Unless your PC can access the drive (dmesg will show what the kernel sees) |
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then there is no easy way of getting the data out of it. |
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I have heard of people opening the USB enclosure of external drives and |
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removing the drive, which they then installed in a laptop. However, these |
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were cases where the USB controller was faulty, rather than the moving |
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elements of the drive itself. |
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If you had access to a forensics lab you could even take the platters out of |
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the drive itself and read them on platter reader. On the other hand, if you |
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only had ccache, distfiles and packages a resync with a new external drive |
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will get you a working system again. |
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Before you head for the shops you would at least want to try another USB cable |
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as Walter suggested, just in case. |
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-- |
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Regards, |
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Mick |
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