[Cialug] Dying commputer question

[Todd Walton]

On Sun, Apr 6, 2008 at 8:20 PM, kristau <kristau at gmail.com> wrote:
> * I'm assuming they re-used the same hard disk.  Have you run
> something like SpinRite on that system?

My dad's hard drive just bit it.  (Get it?  "Bit"...)

It suddenly stopped booting, saying "could not mount drive".  I ran
fsck.reiserfs on it, which reported:

=============================================
fsck 1.38-WIP (09-May-2005)
reiserfsck 3.6.19 (2003 www.namesys.com)

*************************************************************
** If you are using the latest reiserfsprogs and  it fails **
** please  email bug reports to reiserfs-list at namesys.com, **
** providing  as  much  information  as  possible --  your **
** hardware,  kernel,  patches,  settings,  all reiserfsck **
** messages  (including version),  the reiserfsck logfile, **
** check  the  syslog file  for  any  related information. **
** If you would like advice on using this program, support **
** is available  for $25 at  www.namesys.com/support.html. **
*************************************************************

Will read-only check consistency of the filesystem on /dev/hda3
Will put log info to 'stdout'

Do you want to run this program?[N/Yes] (note need to type Yes if you do):Yes

The problem has occurred looks like a hardware problem. If you have
bad blocks, we advise you to get a new hard drive, because once you
get one bad block  that the disk  drive internals  cannot hide from
your sight,the chances of getting more are generally said to become
much higher  (precise statistics are unknown to us), and  this disk
drive is probably not expensive enough  for you to you to risk your
time and  data on it.  If you don't want to follow that follow that
advice then  if you have just a few bad blocks,  try writing to the
bad blocks  and see if the drive remaps  the bad blocks (that means
it takes a block  it has  in reserve  and allocates  it for use for
of that block number).  If it cannot remap the block,  use badblock
option (-B) with  reiserfs utils to handle this block correctly.

bread: Cannot read the block (8210): (Input/output error).

Warning... fsck.reiserfs for device /dev/hda3 exited with signal 6.
=============================================

So, SpinRite is supposed to work on reiserfs filesystems.  Does it
work on a drive that's already toast?

How would one make a copy of the partition if some blocks are bad?
ddrescue wouldn't be able to read those bad blocks, right?

I think my plan of attack is to ddrescue the partition to somewhere
else, fwiw, and then SpinRite the original, fwiw.  Except the second
fwiw is a costly one.  The data is vital.

-todd