[linux-lvm] LVM disk died

[Gert van der Knokke]

Melinda Taylor wrote:

> can someone direct me to the faq that shows me how to recover from a 
> dead drive.
>
> I had LVM spanning 4 HDDs and one will no longer spin up. 

Hi Melinda,

Sometimes a 'dead' drive can be brought back to (temporary) live again 
by giving it a hard knock or better: a sharp twist, as the heads tend to 
stick to the surface of the platters. Mind though that such a drive is 
not trustworthy anymore but if it does spin up you might be able to get 
the data off it.

Best way to this is to take the drive out of the PC and  hold it flat in 
your hand and give it a sharp twist in the horizontal direction. This  
helped me  a few times with such 'sticky' drives. After that, mount it 
back in the PC and try it.

Good luck,
Gert