[TriLUG] Its broke and I gotta fix it

[al johson]

One very old suggestion to try which is very simple, but I've seen it work many times. 

IF you suspect your hard disk has gone bad, you can often bring it back to life (at least long enough to get the info off it onto a new drive) by putting it into TWO plastic bags which have been sealed by twisting the ends and putting a twist tie tightly around them. Put the first bag on the drive and seal it. Then put the second bag over the first and seal it too. This is done to prevent any moisture from forming on the outside or inside of the hard drive. Then put it in a freezer overnight. Take it out of the freezer and defrost it first before removing the two bags. 

This is a very old trick that my friends and I have often used to temporarily repair hard drives and get them working long enough to get the data off them. This is because drives usually go bad because the bearings fail, and when you radically change the temperature of the drive it is often enough to move the shaft and bearing back into the proper position. Try it. Although there are no guarantees you shouldn't hurt the drive in any case, and you might solve your problem AND save your data to boot. If the hard drive is bad already you literally have nothing to lose!! REMEMBER THIS IS NOT A PERMANENT FIX!!  Good Luck, AL
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  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Joselito Almario 
  To: trilug at trilug.org 
  Sent: Friday, February 08, 2002 11:00 AM
  Subject: RE: [TriLUG] Its broke and I gotta fix it


  In addition to checking your jumpers cable power and such you might want ot also check the status of the controllers on the motherboard and the hard drive itself.  Usually if the controllers are bad you can still see the hard drive registered, but anythings possible.  YOu can use a tool like microscope 9 if you can get a hold of it, or Tuff test which is more accesible, but nor as thorough as Microscope 9.
    -----Original Message-----
    From: trilug-admin at trilug.org [mailto:trilug-admin at trilug.org]On Behalf Of Jturena at aol.com
    Sent: Thursday, February 07, 2002 8:57 PM
    To: trilug at trilug.org
    Subject: [TriLUG] Its broke and I gotta fix it


    This is rather selfish, but I have a system that "jammed" on me, and I am new with Linux, and need to fix the problem, so was wondering if I could get any help here, or not. 
    (the machine is in the hands of a repairman that cannot fix it because he knows less about Linux than me, but I was hoping he would examine the hardware-- I need to get the machine back from him) 
    Running RedHat7.0. Home PC. 
    Had Gnome open; had Netscape open; computer was sitting 'on'; woke up one morning in the wee hours of the morning and heard my computer "cycling" through a short rhythmic whirl. Interface was unresponsive; had to turn off machine to proceed; 
    Turned back on-- during booting it read "primary master disk: None; primary slave disk: None". 
    Where do I begin?  By telling you what is in it? Ask and I will try and tell you-- but like I said, I am brand new with computers. With me it is all a big learning process. This one a man put together for me +/- $900. (think I made a mistake. But I wanted to learn GNU-Linux. Looks like I am going to get the lessons I need). 
    (and could it have anything to do with the computer going to "screensaver" and running through that entire file, and then whigging out? that would not explain the 'lost' disks, though) 
    Anyway, as always, I would appreciate any comments. 
    Thanks in advance, for at least the opportunity to post this. 
    Jim 
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