Re: Block 2 hard drive damage

[nparker@cie-2.uoregon.edu (Neil Parker)]

In article <4qeojo$b3c@zot.io.org> crownmi@zot.io.org (Myles Fudge) writes:
>In article <4qabeb$rc@crcnis3.unl.edu>,
>Greg Berigan <gberigan@cse.unl.edu> wrote:
>>Myles.Fudge@logicbbs.org wrote:
>>
>>>My difficulty with an IBM OEM-31080 hard drive seem to have no end in sight.
>>>Last night the drive suffered damage to block 2 and will not boot.
>> {snip}
>>Because I've had so many disk failures of block 2, I now always store my
>>files in subdirectories so that when block 2 fails, I can copy the whole
>>disk to another disk and restore block 2 from another disk created in
>>the same way.
>
>Smart idea.  It would be an inconvenience, however not as much as losing 
>thousands of files.
>
>>I suspect you have physical damage to the location on the disk
>                    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>Oh, god... don't say that!

Has it occurred to anybody that the damage might be in the disk's
partition table?

That would certainly be consistant with the system's inability to see more
that one partition, and its subsequent inability to see anything useful on
that one partition.

If it is a damaged partition table, then reconstructing the damaged part by
hand might be possible.  I'm unaware of any utilities that can reconstruct
a damaged partition table automatically.

               - Neil Parker
-- 
Neil Parker, nparker@{cie-2,cie}.uoregon.edu, http://cie-2.uoregon.edu/~nparker

     "Evolution is vastly overrated."  -- Ambassador Delenn, _Babylon_5_