[plug] [OT] HDD Recovery

[Steve Grasso]

On Sunday 21 October 2001 17:19, skribe wrote:
> I have a Compaq laptop that has a dodgy HDD.  Unfortunately it has some
> important data and mail on it that escaped the usual backup routine that I
> wish to recover. What is the best way to go about doing it?
>
> skribe

How dodgy is the drive? Has it failed completely? Is the MBR intact? What 
kind of file system is on it? 

I've used LDE -- http://lde.sourceforge.net/ -- to successfully recover info 
from failing drives not accessible by 'normal' means (irrespective of file 
system) and rebuilt partition tables using a combination of: 
gpart --http://www.stud.uni-hannover.de/user/76201/gpart/
and parted -- ftp://gnu.mirror.pacific.net.au/gnu/parted/

Regards,
Steve