[ale] Possibly bad hard drive

Thu Feb 21 13:55:09 EST 2013

Disclaimer: I used to do professional data recovery (clean room, head and
platter extractions and replacements, board rebuilds, RAID rebuilds, etc)
working for Scott Moulton.

Spinrite is no better than ddrescue (ddrescue, NOT dd_rescue, which is much
older and shittier). They both try and read sectors in reverse, in PIO
mode, coming from different sections of drive, retrying multiple times,
etc. But it's only as good as the ATA controller itself and the firmware
controlling it - which is to say, not that great. that's why devices like
the Deepspar Disk Imager exist: they have custom controllers DESIGNED for
failing drives (timeouts can be changed, long reads can be used, read
aheads can be turned off, you can read sectors ignoring ECC, etc etc).

"One potential disadvantage of using dd-rescue first is that it could force
the HDD to spare out sectors that are not easily readable" Sector remapping
is done at the firmware level, Spinrite can't prevent it, ddrescue can't
prevent it, no software tool can prevent it (except for maybe MHDD on
certain Seagates if you have the firmware commands). you need something
lower level that can disable sector remaps at the firmware level
temporarily while you image the drive.

The reason Spinrite sucks is that it recovers data back onto the drive
itself and is marketed as a magic bullet for data recovery, when in fact,
it's incredibly disingenuous to sell a tool that breaks the number one rule
of all data recovery. Spinrite can do nothing that ddrescue can't do, and
in fact, ddrescue is a bit more robust as far as error recovery and
granularity goes, plus it actually gives you a usable dd image. GRC is a
blowhard idiot at data recovery and at networking (omg raw sockets in Win
XP, the sky is falling!!).

On Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 1:17 PM, Ron Frazier (ALE) <
atllinuxenthinfo at techstarship.com> wrote:

> Wrong, sort of.  I am a Spinrite user and have had good results in
> recovering data on a few occasions.  It is a valuable tool and has data
> recovery capabilities that nothing else I'm aware of does.  HOWEVER, you
> have to use it the right way.  I'm away from my desk right now and will
> write up a detailed description of how to use Spinrite properly when I get
> back.
>
> Spinrite can often recover sectors which are unreadable sectors which
> other products cannot.  There are literally thousands of accounts where
> Spinrite has recovered unusable drives enough where they were either usable
> or they were at least where the data could be recovered.
>
> I will agree that you should first try to recover the readable sectors and
> save them away.  Use dd-rescue, or GNU dd-rescue or something else.
>
> http://www.gnu.org/software/ddrescue/ddrescue.html
>
> You may wish to google dd rescue.  I know I've read that there are more
> advanced alternatives than the original dd-rescue.
>
> Use one of these to read the readable sectors.  Save that data on a
> different hard drive.
>
> THEN, use Spinrite to potentially read the sectors that the rescue program
> could not.  At this point, you have nothing to lose, since you've recovered
> what you can and what remains is, by definition, not recoverable by the
> rescue program.
>
> One potential disadvantage of using dd-rescue first is that it could force
> the HDD to spare out sectors that are not easily readable.  Once that's
> done, even Spinrite won't be able to touch them.  I don't know specifically
> how to prevent that behavior from the drive.  But, I know that Spinrite
> prevents sector sparing until it has finished its data recovery analysis.
>
> I hope to write up a more detailed explanation of how to use Spinrite
> later today.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Ron
>
>
>
>
> dev null zero two <dev.null.02 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >you definitely shouldn't give spinrite a try if you value your data.
> >recovering data BACK ONTO DAMAGED MEDIA is the number 1 no-no in data
> >recovery. just buy a new drive and ddrescue your data to it.
> >
> >
> >On Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 11:43 AM, Scott Plante
> ><splante at insightsys.com>wrote:
> >
> >> You should definitely give Spinrite a try. Watch the video for a
> >detailed
> >> explanation of how it works.
> >> http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm
> >>
> >> ------------------------------
> >> *From: *"Jonathan Meek" <jonathan.l.meek at gmail.com>
> >> *To: *"Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts" <ale at ale.org>
> >> *Sent: *Thursday, February 21, 2013 8:31:33 AM
> >> *Subject: *[ale]  Possibly bad hard drive
> >>
> >>
> >> Hey guys,
> >>
> >> I believe my hard drive is about to give up the ghost hard. Saturday
> >the
> >> system booted without issue then Monday, I booted the system and
> >tried to
> >> start Firefox. The taskbar freaked out and I had to do a hard
> >shutdown.
> >> After multiple restarts I was able to get the system back up but at
> >all the
> >> restarts, I got a error message that stated that it couldn't find a
> >> particular directory and to press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart the system.
> >>
> >> Finally I got the system to give the prompt for entering in my
> >harddrive
> >> password (I have an encrypted hard disk that I setup when I did a
> >fresh
> >> install of lubuntu last time). It checked for errors and found some,
> >it
> >> tried to repair them and hung at mounting /tmp.
> >>
> >> I restarted the system and this time it rebooted without issue I got
> >all
> >> the way to the home screen and logged in. Launched Firefox without
> >issue
> >> and goofed around for a few minutes while I let my backup system
> >backup for
> >> the final time (in fear of never getting it back).
> >>
> >> Shutdown the system and restarted it with a Ubuntu 12.04 live CD in
> >order
> >> to do check the hard drive. Went into Disk Utility and the system
> >> recognized I had a hard drive but when I tried any of the benchmarks
> >it
> >> balked at me saying it couldn't read as well as the SMART Status said
> >"not
> >> applicable". This might be from the encryption but I don't know.
> >>
> >> Exited out of the live CD, boot the system again, and it booted
> >without
> >> incident. Tried to do software update, it griped at me saying that
> >there
> >> was not enough room in /boot to do an update and to use sudo apt-get
> >clean.
> >> Run sudo apt-get clean and tried the update again. Same error
> >message.
> >> Repeated this step 5 times before giving up.
> >>
> >> I am not sure what to do at this stage with it because I can't seem
> >to
> >> wipe the drive probably due to the encryption because I tried to
> >install
> >> Ubuntu 12.04 since I had a backup of all my data.
> >>
> >> All that backstory was to ask this one question: Is there anything
> >else I
> >> can do to give some level of assurance the actual status of the hard
> >drive?
> >> I think it is busted but I am not sure.
> >>
> >> Regards,
> >>
> >> Jonathan
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> Ale mailing list
> >> Ale at ale.org
> >> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
> >> See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at
> >> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo
> >>
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> Ale mailing list
> >> Ale at ale.org
> >> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
> >> See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at
> >> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
> >------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> >_______________________________________________
> >Ale mailing list
> >Ale at ale.org
> >http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
> >See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at
> >http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo
>
>
> --
>
> Sent from my Android Acer A500 tablet with bluetooth keyboard and K-9 Mail.
> Please excuse my potential brevity if I'm typing on the touch screen.
>
> (PS - If you email me and don't get a quick response, you might want to
> call on the phone.  I get about 300 emails per day from alternate energy
> mailing lists and such.  I don't always see new email messages very
> quickly.)
>
> Ron Frazier
> 770-205-9422 (O)   Leave a message.
> linuxdude AT techstarship.com
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Ale mailing list
> Ale at ale.org
> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
> See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at
> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.ale.org/pipermail/ale/attachments/20130221/8b25835f/attachment.html>