[linux-lvm] LVM1 Bad harddisk. How do I het data off the Volume?

[M. Matt Colgin]

Hello Heine,

It sounds like you're in a bad spot. I've been having issues with
Maxtor drives as of late myself. In the past 2 months, I've had 4 die
and 2 WD. Be prepared. I haven't worked with LVM1, but you're probably
sounds independant of the LVM version at this point.

This bad spot... It's because the BIOS won't recognize the drive. The
only way to get anything off the disk is to get it recognized by the
computer, only then can you do some magical recovery stuff, like
dd_rescue.

Since you've already tried multiple controllers, the only thing I can
suggest is to try a different computer. The key is going to be
fiddling with the BIOS, only once you get the BIOS to recognize the
drive, will you be able to proceed. Pull everything out of of the
computer that isn't needed for running, that includes extra HD's,
controller cards, sounds cards, everything. Try the Auto-Detect in the
BIOS, if that doesn't work, try giving it the exact CHS parameters,
try different computers (some BIOS will detect it). Try the PowerMax
util from Maxtor, even if you can't get BIOS to quite recognize the
drive, just a quick test as you don't want to strain the drive much
more.

If you can get it to POST with the correct drive, use the dd_rescue
util and another drive. This will copy the old drive to a new one, at
a sector by sector level. It'll take a *very* long time, but you might
be able to get some data off the drive. But prepared for the worst and
you'll be excited if you get anything off.

As I said, I've had this happen quite a lot lately, with these crappy
Maxtor drives and their 1 year warranty. DD_rescue took 5 days on a
200 GB drive and was able to get 80% of the data off of the drive,
enough that I could bring up the VG in paritial mode and get a lot of
the data off, but alas a lot was lost too.

http://www.garloff.de/kurt/linux/ddrescue/

On Mon, 28 Feb 2005 18:16:32 +0100, Heine Laursen
<maillist at gozar.dynu.com> wrote:
> go0ogl3 wrote:
> > Did you check the ATA/ide cable? Did you try to replace that cable or
> > to verify if the drive has one or more ide pins bent or shorted?
> 
> Yes, I have tryed with 2 differnt controlers (onboard, and promse
> controler) and 2 different ide cables. There are no pins who are bent.
> 
> Sincerley
> Heine Laursen
> 
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