Disk Recovery - Part II

[rlk at alum.mit.edu (Robert L Krawitz)]

   Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2005 13:45:06 -0500
   From: Kent Borg <kentborg at borg.org>
   Cc: lug at the-leveys.us, discuss at blu.org

   On Fri, Dec 16, 2005 at 01:38:10PM -0500, Robert L Krawitz wrote:
   > I think Rich is right -- dd the partition off to a file (on another
   > disk!).

   Maybe stop and think if there are any specific files or directories
   that are more important than others, and if a small portion of the
   disk, maybe tar them up first.

Actually, when I did this, I did create a plan for what I would
extract in what order.  I was assuming that I would probably get at
most one more spin-up of the drive, and decided to extract /etc and a
few files from my home directory followed by an attempt to dump off
the partitions.  I used a bootable CD rather than trying to boot off
the drive.  However, when I powered on the laptop, the drive actually
came up cleanly, and I managed to get everything.

There's a tradeoff between extracting files and dumping off the
partition, as Rich pointed out.  Dumping a partition is much less
stressful to the drive, but you need to access the drive for a much
longer period of time.

The drive's still sitting in my basement, until I figure out how to
dispose of it appropriately.