Sick Computer

Tom · March 01, 2011, 09:31:30 AM

Quote from: Mr. Analog on March 01, 2011, 09:21:12 AM
Quote from: Tom on March 01, 2011, 09:19:20 AM
I've used imagerec/jpegrec before. Worked rather well. But it may not support all file formats you may want to save.

The tool i used flattened all my PSD files, so while I got some of them back most of them were unusable

Its hard to get right. If the fs is essentially dead, all it can do is try and guess at things. And its really really easy to get wrong when the file is fragmented. If the file descriptor/inode/whatever-windows-calls-it is gone, the tool doesn't know which block is next, so all you may get is the first block or maybe the first few.

I once accidentally formatted a partition, and lost all of the main meta data, but the actual file data was still there, so at the very least the tool was able to rescue non fragmented files. But it took a while, it scans for a set of known "mime types" and tries its best to save them.

Thorin · March 07, 2011, 08:44:14 PM

Goin' on 8 days and about a third done... It's currently averaging about 0.4MB/sec. Was slower before, but now seems to be speeding up. And then, when this run is done, I'll have to run it again to try and fill in the error sections. And then there'll be the swap-the-controller-board attempt.

Thorin · March 13, 2011, 01:07:58 AM

Well, pretty much fourteen days later here, and it finally finished. When ddrescue got all the way through, it showed about 3GB in errors. 3GB? Damn! But wait, why is ddrescue still running? Oh look, it's "trimming error areas". 3GB got whittled down to 15MB, with 2932 errors found on the disk <sigh> I guess it's just all gone. Oh no, wait, you can tell ddrescue to run through the error areas again, but to retry a failed read. Oh look, it's re-reading the errored areas, and they're becoming non-errors!

Holy crap, I managed to copy the entire 1TB drive without errors!

Damn, I'm loving ddrescue right now. That is, if it worked. Gonna have to connect up the new drive and see if it runs Windows - it should, since it was an entire disk duplicated.

Tom · March 13, 2011, 11:20:14 AM

Looks like its just a flakey controller if it actually managed to read without errors. Sounds like it anyhow. If it were a mechanical issue, the drive probably would have crashed a week or two ago.

Lets hope it wasn't silently corrupting data as it read though. That's a possibility.

Thorin · March 13, 2011, 03:24:24 PM

I've managed to boot to Windows and do some things in Windows and it's running at normal speed, all from the copied drive. So I think you're bang on, Tom, I think the controller's just going/gone bad.

Now to think about how I want to protect this data, now that I have it back.

Tom · March 13, 2011, 05:04:54 PM

Quote from: Thorin on March 13, 2011, 03:24:24 PM
I've managed to boot to Windows and do some things in Windows and it's running at normal speed, all from the copied drive. So I think you're bang on, Tom, I think the controller's just going/gone bad.

Now to think about how I want to protect this data, now that I have it back.

My preferred option atm, is a semi-regular rsync from main to backup. Now if you want to copy both directions, you can use rsync to sync in both directions at once, which I haven't done yet. Or use some windows tool to do it. Not sure about the options there for that.

Thorin · April 08, 2011, 09:51:39 PM

Great, it's been three weeks, I'm just trying to figure out what new drives I should buy, and suddenly the famdamily is saying the computer is taking forever to start up again. Is that a second drive gone bad now? I bought the a year ago, today!

You know, I bought Western Digital Caviar Blacks after hearing that they were the bomb, but my experience thus far has been that the cheapo Seagates Dell puts in their computers last, like four times as long.

Tom · April 08, 2011, 10:07:13 PM

Well the drives aren't supposed to be dying that fast. Either you are really /lucky/ and got two bad drives from (likely) the same batch. Or your machine is killing drives. If you have a digital multimeter, I'd try checking the voltages coming off the 3.3v, 5v and 12v lines (easiest to get to from the white molex connectors most used for PATA hard drives), if they are off the ATX spec, I'd think about getting a new power supply. Or if it is known to be good, re-jig the power hookups, some PSUs like to split up the power into separate rails in odd ways, making it somewhat tricky to hook everything up properly (as I found on my old desktop PSU, had to do some funky rewiring to make sure there was enough power for drives).

Thorin · April 08, 2011, 10:42:39 PM

Hmm, five year warranty on both of those. And Western Digital does Advance Product Replacement. So they'll replace these drives for me. I think I'm going to go buy on more drive, copy all my stuff to it, then RMA these bee-otches. Damn, I should've RMA-ed the first failing drive right after I copied it, then I'd have another one sitting here to copy stuff to.

Still, with three drives I can have one in the machine, one attached in an external case taking backups, and a third inside the machine in RAID 1 (once I have three working drives).

Melbosa · April 09, 2011, 12:25:45 AM

Careful putting one in an exteranl enclosure, unless it has a fan. I've cooked a couple now letting them connect and power on for a week plus. Without active cooling most 3.5s don't last too long.

Tom · April 09, 2011, 10:22:38 AM

Quote from: Melbosa on April 09, 2011, 12:25:45 AM
Careful putting one in an exteranl enclosure, unless it has a fan. I've cooked a couple now letting them connect and power on for a week plus. Without active cooling most 3.5s don't last too long.

My external enclosure has been pretty good. It keeps the temps down by being a large heatsink in and of itself. Made of aluminum, it gets fairly warm to the touch.

Mr. Analog · April 09, 2011, 08:58:02 PM

My Drobo is always nice and cool, if not noisy from the 4" fan in back

Tom · April 09, 2011, 09:12:52 PM

Here's the temps my server's disk are at:

/dev/sda: ST3500418AS: 25?C
/dev/sdb: ST3500418AS: 25?C
/dev/sdc: ST31000528AS: 38?C
/dev/sdd: ST31000528AS: 38?C
/dev/sde: ST31000528AS: 39?C
/dev/sdf: ST31000523AS: 37?C
/dev/sdg: ST31000528AS: 35?C
/dev/sdh: ST31000528AS: 37?C

First two are sitting right behind a fan. The rest used to have 40mm fans, but they kept failing, so I disconnected the fans. The temps don't get much over 40c, so I don't much think they were necessary.

Thorin · April 10, 2011, 03:01:12 PM

Mel: Well, the computer cases don't have active cooling for the drives either. Just a CPU fan and a power fan. Thanks for the warning, though.

Tom: That's a lot of drives. And they're all Seagates? Barracuda 7200.12s? Any problems? Lots of people online seem to complain about them failing early... And yet, I bought the WDs that are supposed to be great and I've got two acting up within one year.

Melbosa · April 10, 2011, 04:29:25 PM

I run 15 drives non-stop in the house. I have 4 Maxtor, 8 Seagate, 2 Western Digital, and one Toshiba. I've had each group fail one drive in the past 4 years.

But I believe if you can get active cooling on those drives, they will last longer. I always have a fan causing some type of air flow over my drives, which is a good practice for any computer component in your household.