Re: re-using a damaged disk

On Mon, Jan 07, 2008 at 08:14:06AM -0600, Ron Johnson wrote:
On 01/07/08 08:00, Douglas A. Tutty wrote:
On Mon, Jan 07, 2008 at 08:19:16AM +0100, pol wrote:
Douglas A. Tutty wrote:
Since its only the /usr directory (presumably its own partition), don't
reformat it or you'll have to reinstall. If it's ext2/3, use
# e2fsck -c -c /dev/xxx
That was my first recovering oeration.
It is about 10 hours 'fsck.ext3' is running now, yet less than half
partition has been scanned. My /usr partition is 2 GB.
Is it possible to pause the process, so as to be able to restart fsck
later?

I am not aware of that option.

Has anything shown up in /var/log/syslog to indicate any drive problems?

When you say 'fsck.ext3', did you use '-c -c' or not? If not, it will
only sort out the file system it won't look for bad blocks.

Probably another 12 hrs to go.

For a 2GB partition...

Which is why Smart People are working on a Linux fs that doesn't
need to be fsck'ed. Sadly, I think they are doomed to failure (or
fated to only partial success), because IMO speed is the polar
opposite of data security.

Even if the filesystem type didn't need to be fsck'ed, for a damaged
drive I wanted to try to reuse, I wouldn't put real data on it until I
had exercised it for 24 hrs straight anyway. It may as well look for
badblocks. Hopefully, it won't find any and the drive can remap itself
internally.

Silly me, I just thought, does this drive have S.M.A.R.T.? If so, when
you do reinstall, put the smartmontools on it and run a long test.

I remember that at the beginning of the thread, the OP presented the
drive as one that had "hard crashed". Later, we learn that it is a
laptop that was dropped 1m to the floor. I know that there are external
laptop-drive enclosures that are rated for 1m drop to concrete with no
damage (addonics Jupiter, Quantum Go-Vault). Perhaps the laptop is well
built and no damage was done at all.

Good luck.

Doug.


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