[mdlug] Some odd experience recovering NTFS drive

[David McMillan]

	Thanks to everyone for their feedback, but I think it's *really* toast 
now.  It had hit about 60% on the ddrescue run when suddenly the drive 
(which was sitting on the desk next to me) *jumped* about an inch and 
started *shrieking*.  I guess the platter bearing went from "rattling" 
to "seized" and all that inertia dumped into the frame.
	Fortunately there isn't anything terribly critical on the drive to 
recover, but I was hoping to be able to clone it off before it died. 
Now I'll have to dig up an XP install disk for it....

Michael S. Mikowski wrote:

> Yup, the drive is almost certainly toast.  However, if you need that one last 
> read to get your data off, an old trick is to chill the drive first by letting 
> it soak in the refrigerator for 5 hours or the freezer for 1.  I did this 
> before, and was able to extract the data before the drive went south again.

	I might try this, but given how long ddrescue was taking (I mean, 5-6 
days?), I don't think the chill would last long enough.  Unless I ran a 
Really Long USB cable into the fridge... Hm.....

> Another trick that some claim work is to strike the drive fairly hard against 
> a table before powering it up.  It /might/ reseat the bearings a bit and again 
> give you a chance to pull some data.  However, you probably want to do this 
> after all other methods fail.  If nothing else, the physical abuse to the damn 
> thing might give you some degree of satisfaction ;)
	
	Probably do that too, but maybe I'll save it for second-to-last -- just 
before I break out the