[PLUG] Hard drive recovery

[Aaron Burt]

On Tue, Aug 24, 2010 at 08:44:41PM -0700, Daniel Herrington wrote:
> All,
> 
> My hd in my laptop just failed. Since I've been on the road for 4 weeks, I
> haven't been able to rsynch with my file server.

Crap.  I'm sorry to hear that!

> Since It gives a soft beeping (probably not a real beeping but some
> mechanical failure), are there any open source diagnostic tools that
> would even work?

Leave the drive overnight in the freezer.  You might get it to spin up long
enough to get critical files off.

Usually, that beeping is the motor trying to spin up the drive, because
the coils have shorted, the bearings have frozen or the head has stuck to
the platter.  Software won't help.