Notebook hard disk -> rescue data

[Mati]

Hi there,

since yesterday my notebook harddisk makes strange sounds and i can not start anything anymore. I suppose the hard disk is gone. I started knoppix and gparted does not find any device. I also
cannot mount any device, there are 128 different devices which i dont know which to choose. It always says "...is not a valid block device".

Any hints what i can try to do? How to rescue my data? I suppose first i have to mount the disk right?

EDIT: fdisk -l returns immediately to the prompt without printing anything - i suppose the HD is not recognized anymore. What can I do?

[DawgG]

you should not mount the disk or do anything that attempts to write anything to it.
check in the bios if it recognizes any kind of disk, then boot a rescue-cd and make a block-based image of the original disk (write it on an external harddrive or sth. similar.) a good prog to read/write the image is ddrescue (or dd_rescue), it can skip unreadable blocks.
if that finishes (with not too many errors), you can experiment a little more, maybe make images of the single partitions (they are easier to mount and read).
oh the images you can later work with normal recovery (eg testdisk) or filesystem-tools.

if the device is not recognized at all there is not much hope for your data :(
it might help to check all the cables and maybe pull them off and put them on again or put the disk into another enclosure.
(a couple of times i've had some success with esoteric methods like putting the disk in the freezer for some hours and then reading from it, but that is really desperate).

all the programs you need you can find eg on the (bootable and gentoo-based) systemrescue-cd: www.sysresccd.org
GOOD LUCK!
_________________
DUMM KLICKT GUT.

[schorsch_76]

I suggest use ddrescue to create an image of the harddisk to an external hard disk. I did that a few days ago with an hard disk i could not mount. smartctl -a /dev/sda reported it as defective and mount could not mount the hard disk.

Bye
schorsch

[Mati]

öha thanks for the comments. ok, so no disk is recognized/listed by the BIOS subssystem. So the device is not recognized
maybe i try to put into the fridge

[schorsch_76]

I would try to conect it to a different SATA port. If you cant see the device with linux tools, you are lost. You need at least the device node.
Bye
schorsch