drive recovery of dual-boot system

[Jerry Feldman]

I think the problem is with the system. If you cannot boot from the CD
Rom then I think you may have a more serious problem. I am somewhat
anti-Dell because of the 2 pieces of crap servers Boston User Groups
bought a few years ago (1 for BLU). Both systems failed after time.

On 01/26/2012 12:47 AM, Greg Rundlett (freephile) wrote:
> I have an internal hard drive that won't boot.
>
> The system (Dell Studio Hybrid) also will not boot from CD-ROM
> (regardless of what I do with the boot sequence, F2, BIOS settings
> etc.)  In fact it doesn't seem that BIOS settings actually get saved.
>  But that's another matter.  I'm concerned with recovering data from
> the failed drive.  And obviously using a bootable CD like the System
> Rescue CD won't work.
>
> I bought an enclosure so that I could read from the drive using my
> laptop as the working host.
>
> The bad drive in question is 250GB and has a number of partitions and
> file system types:
>
> Disk /dev/sdc: 250.1 GB, 250059350016 bytes
> 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
> Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
> Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
> I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
> Disk identifier: 0x50000000
>
>    Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
> /dev/sdc1               1           7       56196   de  Dell Utility
> /dev/sdc2               8        1966    15728640    7  HPFS/NTFS
> /dev/sdc3   *        1966        5881    31453961    7  HPFS/NTFS
> /dev/sdc4            5882       30401   196956900    5  Extended
> /dev/sdc5            5882       29402   188932401   83  Linux
> /dev/sdc6           29403       30401     8024436   82  Linux swap /
> Solaris
>
> At first I tried dd_rescue to copy the entire device to a file on an
> external 1TB drive.  The device is a dual-boot setup so it has a
> Windows partition and a Linux partition (plus factory-installed
> recovery and utility partitions).  dd_rescue copied a lot of data but
> it complained when I ran fsck on the resulting file:
>
> # fsck -y /media/disk-a/backups/hybrid/backup.img
>
>     fsck from util-linux-ng 2.17.2
>     e2fsck 1.41.11 (14-Mar-2010)
>     fsck.ext2: Superblock invalid, trying backup blocks...
>     fsck.ext2: Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open
>     /media/disk-a/backups/hybrid/backup.img
>
>     The superblock could not be read or does not describe a correct ext2
>     filesystem.  If the device is valid and it really contains an ext2
>     filesystem (and not swap or ufs or something else), then the
>     superblock
>     is corrupt, and you might try running e2fsck with an alternate
>     superblock:
>         e2fsck -b 8193 <device>
>
>
> This leads me to think that I can't create a backup of the entire
> device to a single file if the device is partitioned into multiple
> file system types.  So, I'm back to square one.  I'm going to try
> gnu *ddrescue *and create a copy of just the Linux partition into a
> file on the external USB drive.  Then I'll try mounting that file as a
> loop device to see if I have my data.  
>
> Is my understanding correct, or should I be able to backup the entire,
> multi-filesystem, multi-partition device.  In the latter case, I was
> going to restore it to a new drive (still in the mail) and hope that
> I'd still be able to dual-boot the system.  If I can only do one OS at
> a time, then I'm hoping I won't run into problems trying to install my
> licensed copy of windows onto a new hard drive from media that I don't
> have.
>
>
> Greg Rundlett
> my public PGP key
> <http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x5E07A26B877CEBF6>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> gnhlug-discuss mailing list
> gnhlug-discuss at mail.gnhlug.org
> http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/


-- 
Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id:3BC1EB90 
PGP Key fingerprint: 49E2 C52A FC5A A31F 8D66  C0AF 7CEA 30FC 3BC1 EB90


-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 546 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/private/gnhlug-discuss/attachments/20120126/1aa392d1/attachment-0001.bin