[TriLUG] hard drive recovery service - try Spin-Rite

[Pat Regan]

Reid Sayre wrote:
> Pat and Jason,
> 
> Spin-Rite has several levels of test/recovery. The first is a read-only 
> scan and verification test. It is completely non-destructive but will 
> tell you how many errors there are. The second will try to recover 
> unreadable data. Higher numbers do more function with the highest level 
> being the most preventative.
> 

Like Mike said, just powering up a failing hard drive (especially one
that is making terrible noises) could destroy your data.  Passing the
head over the entire disk could be a lot worse.

Do any of its recovery functions actually copy the data to another
drive?  If not, I especially wouldn't use it on a noisy drive.  I am
assuming it doesn't, but I did not thoroughly read the website.

If someone is going to attempt data recovery themselves, the best first
step in recovering data would be to copy the data to another drive with
something like dd_rescue.  At that point, I wouldn't be afraid to run
Spinrite and make another dd_rescue copy of the data I need (limiting
yourself specifically to the data you need would be very smart, too).

> The whole recovery process depends, of course, on the importance of the 
> data and your budget for recovering it. The last time a drive failed on 
> my desktop system (before I saw Spin-Rite), estimates started at $1000 
> and went up from there. Time estimates started at a week and went up 
> from there. If you go to Google and search for "data recovery service" 
> you will get a lot of good candidates.
> 

Data recovery services are expensive, I won't argue that.  But it sounds
to me like Spinrite should not be the first tool to reach for when
recovering data.  Depending on what is wrong with the drive it could
very well make it impossible to recover your data.

I am not saying it didn't work for you, or anyone else.  I am just
saying you are lucky the drive wasn't suffering from an ailment that
would have made the problem much worse.

> Finally, from a "lessons learned" perspective, you will probably be more 
> diligent about backup after this. There are various on-line backup tools 
> for this and there has been some discussion on this list lately. For the 
> moment, I use a service  from http://www.ibackup.com for my critical 
> files (not particularly valuable to other people, but hard to recreate 
> if lost). Every morning about 2:30, the client agent wakes up and sends 
> a copy of all the files that are changed up to the service. They have 
> their own client for Windows and use rsync for Linux. I sleep a lot 
> easier at night now. I have no business interest in ibackup other than 
> as a satisfied customer.
> 

Backups, backups, backups :).  I could easily write 10 paragraphs about
backups, but I'll try not to :).  I'll just say to do something,
anything.  Anything is better than nothing :).

I'd be happy to discuss backup strategies for personal data with anyone
who is interested :).

Pat
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