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 Harddrive failure
Before I get going, I am going to admit I'm an idiot. I never did backups. I deserve the troubles I am having now. 
Ok, now that that is said....
I have had my Fedora box running for a few years, pretty much just sitting in it's corner quietly doing it's thing. Until yesterday, when it died.
Seems the fan went out, the computer got hot (capacitors are blown, etc). I don't care about the computer, but I DO care about the data on the hard drive.
Apparently it (the drive) got hot too. 
It's a Seagate Barracudda 7200.9 (120gb) drive. It is making a beeping noise when I power it on.
seeing other threads - so I'll say this:
Yes, the DRIVE is making the beeping noise. NOT the computer. I pulled the drive out and put it into an external bay so I could plug it into another computer via USB.
The good news (I hope) is that the beeping stops after a couple of minutes and the drive appears to be spinning normally.
The bad news - plugging the usb in does nothing. The computer simply doesn't see it. I have also tried to plug the drive into other computers directly - the bios on those other computers never see the drive either.
So what are my options? How badly will a data recovery company hit me (and can they actually save my data)?
And to repeat - I'm an idiot.
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Looked at a data recovery co. late last year, $50 diagnosis fee, $800 to get data back but no guarantees. They get a identical drive and move the platters to the new host.
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You might want to try getting an identical model with the same revision of firmware (ebay) and swapping the controller boards on the drive. Most drives have all their vulnerable circuitry on that board and none inside. If the damage was caused by heat, and the board fried, there is a good chance you can repair it, or at lease recover data.
Cheers
Mike
$whatis microsoft
microsoft: nothing appropriate
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I'll echo techwise and say that trying to get an identical hard drive and swapping the boards MAY save you in this case.
I don't want to sound condescending here, but I've had a LOT of hard drives fail in the past few years and I don't trust them anymore. Laptops running Linux can easily be dd'ed onto larger 3.5" hard drives and the drives overall can be put on RAID for free (except for the cost of the drive). Just don't buy the RAID drives all in one go!
James
PS. Don't ignore drive warnings!!!
Last edited by Satanic Atheist; 05-16-2009 at 11:28 AM.
Reason: Down the pub
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perl -e 'use Math::Complex;$|=1;for$r(0..24){for$c (0..79){$C=cplx(($c/20.0)-3.0,-($r/12.0)+1.0);$Z= cplx(0,0);for($i=0;($i<80)&&(abs($Z)<2.0);$i++){$Z =$Z*$Z+$C;}print$i>=80?"*":" ";}print"\n";}'
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 fix
 Originally Posted by CNBarnes
Before I get going, I am going to admit I'm an idiot. I never did backups. I deserve the troubles I am having now.
Ok, now that that is said....
I have had my Fedora box running for a few years, pretty much just sitting in it's corner quietly doing it's thing. Until yesterday, when it died.
Seems the fan went out, the computer got hot (capacitors are blown, etc). I don't care about the computer, but I DO care about the data on the hard drive.
Apparently it (the drive) got hot too. :eek
It's a Seagate Barracudda 7200.9 (120gb) drive. It is making a beeping noise when I power it on.
seeing other threads - so I'll say this:
Yes, the DRIVE is making the beeping noise. NOT the computer. I pulled the drive out and put it into an external bay so I could plug it into another computer via USB.
The good news (I hope) is that the beeping stops after a couple of minutes and the drive appears to be spinning normally.
The bad news - plugging the usb in does nothing. The computer simply doesn't see it. I have also tried to plug the drive into other computers directly - the bios on those other computers never see the drive either.
So what are my options? How badly will a data recovery company hit me (and can they actually save my data)?
And to repeat - I'm an idiot.
 You are not! You just haven't learned when to quit. Hard drives commonly beep (no, they don't have ittybitty soundcards or teeny tiny speakers in them; Its the computer all right. Old hard drives, even a oldy but goody Seagate 120GB, can wear out. I wouldn't even do a drive check on this one. Its burning and it will take your motherboard and your entire hardware system with it if you keep on. Put in a new hard drive. but first, get rid of Fedora. University kids messed around with that for years and loved it as their Linux-of-choice, especially here At Worcester Polytechnic Institute. What you have on that hard drive is probably lost. There are scientists that can retrieve almost anything from a drive, but they are very highly paid consultants used by such folks as the NSA, CIA, FAA and huge companies with very deep pockets. Get a new one, a 300GB (the normal person, even storing scads of data, doesn't use that much, and a TB drive? Outrageous! You might want to go to a tech and have you motherboard given a SiSoft Sandra run, or whatever software they use. Geeksquad does this service by the ton, but it costs and the sales buzzards at Best Buy will hang and try to sell you new stuff way more expensive than what you can get online with your friend's computer. Or-
Make friends with a local computer repair store. Many love your business and will sell you stuff cheaper than you can believe, even used things that are completely refurbished and even new. Giving custom to your local small businessperson is a feature of great bargaining skills. I have quite a nice relationship with my Chinese computer guy who never fails to criticise me, Beijing style.
The adage is: "If its running hot, use it not."
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Originally Posted by Satanic Atheist
I'll echo techwise and say that trying to get an identical hard drive and swapping the boards MAY save you in this case.
I don't want to sound condescending here, but I've had a LOT of hard drives fail in the past few years and I don't trust them anymore. Laptops running Linux can easily be dd'ed onto larger 3.5" hard drives and the drives overall can be put on RAID for free (except for the cost of the drive). Just don't buy the RAID drives all in one go!
James
PS. Don't ignore drive warnings!!!
You got that PS right. But hard drives are more stupid than the computers. They only get brain glop when we give it to them. Giving 598MB of brainpower to a 120GB hard drive is pablum. No. Don't trust a thing in any computer. (That's why I actually listen to mine while its running). Gamers burn out graphics cards like hotrodders on Memorial Day. I saw (and smelled) a sound card and music processing unit actually catch fire frying the whole works. The hiphop guy went nuts and started jumping and screaming around the room. It makes since, don't ya think, just to get a great brand name hard drive, have it tested for bad sectors and mechanical erros and just be careful not to man handle the thing, then put it in the right way? (If its a laptop, just have a tech do it. I won't touch the inside of one of those things). I see our man has a problem he can easily fix if he does it right. Being cautious just makes sense, I agree.
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