Disk crash:Any hopes/suggestions?

[svar]

Hi, I have two different linux systems and unfortunately both crashed very recently. One is a 3 (SCSI) disk machine
and apparently crashed after a power failure. When it tries to boot it recognizes all 3 disks, but is unable to read the third one(containing /home, unfortunately). This is a Seagate Barracuda disk from 1999, so maybe it is not unexpected to have a crash in 4 years.

The other one I am more concerned about is an IBM 38GB IDE
disk from 2001. This one is in a PC having two different
linux systems on it, one on /dev/hda is a 2.2.10 kernel
and is working fine. The second one(the one that crashed)
/dev/hdb had a 2.4.18 kernel. The crash occured fairly suddenly, I had an open shell from KDE doing a vi
of a file, had to go discuss somewhere for half an hour then when I got back the system was hung, I alt-ctrl-backspace and then rebooted and the difference is it will
not even see the second disk(which gives me some hope that
it is not some partition that has crashed, but maybe a bad connection?)
Does anyone understand why in one case BIOS sees the faulty
disk and in the other case it pretends it's not even there?
Any suggestions what to do next?
I am able to boot via floppy(since lilo was on /dev/hdb)
but cannot mount /dev/hdb2 /tmp/root or home
of course, it does not even admit there is a second HD
in there.

Thanks in advance for any help,
svar

 

[timsr]

IBM hds are notorious for motor problems. Thats why they no longer make drives themselves. If the motor has failed, it may not be possible to get the data back without sending it to a data recovery service.

One suggestion, BUT BE CAREFUL because it only works if it is the motor, is we have had limited success getting a drive to spin up to recover data by removing the drive and connecting outside the pc. TAP don't slam, the side of the drive gently and sometimes it will spin up long enough to get data off. BE CAREFUL not to slam the drive, just tap so it doesn't jar the heads much. Once again, this is ONLY if the drive is not spinning up.

The problem could be with the ide channel. Check cmos and maybe move to the secondary channel.

If none of the above work, Ontrack DataRecovery does a nice job for a "reasonable" price.

 

[j1bber]

Are you saying that the second PC cannot see the hdb in bios if so at the first instance try reseating the connections, if that doesnt work try it in another machine.
I have one box that periodically "forgets" one of my drives and I have to switch the bios to auto discover for that disk to get things going again.
I know I'm too tight to spend money on it but its fine if I never switch the box off.
This is the bit where I used to love saying (when I worked in support) "Of course , you've got a recent backup?"

 

[svar]

Thanks, I'll try this. Regarding the second case as in j1bber, it turns out one of the connections had gone bad.
Opened it, replaced the connection, then BIOS was able to detect both disks, but booting resulted in kernel panic
So I unwisely shut off the box again-had to leave at that point- and now it will not detect either disk, but I am able to boot the first disk from the floppy. I will reopen it when I get back home.

Thanks, svar