On Sat, Aug 05, 2006 at 12:29:43AM +0100, Laurence Darby wrote:
> BTW, it was actually one disk of nice and fast RAID 0 (so I'm
> restoring to the one good disk). Does anybody know if data recovery from
> it would be possible?  I hope *not*, since I'm sending it back under
> waranty, and I can't erase it cos its dead, although it sounded like
> the platter might be all scratched up...

As always, it depends on what you want to pay.  If you have the money
to burn, just about anything besdies physical platter
destruction/degaussing can be recovered.  I read an article not that
long ago about recovering a hard disk that had been burned in a fire.

I've had quite good luck doing poor man's data recovery.  Boot the
machine into Knoppix or like ilk and use dd_rescue to copy the disk to
an image file or another disk.  dd_rescue is smart about skipping
areas of the disk it cannot read instead of giving up.  It can take a
long time, but I've recovered quite a bit of data with that sucker.

Good luck!

-- 
Ross Vandegrift
ross AT kallisti DOT us

"The good Christian should beware of mathematicians, and all those who
make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians
have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine
man in the bonds of Hell."
        --St. Augustine, De Genesi ad Litteram, Book II, xviii, 37