Disk recovery

My father-in-law came to me with a failed hard disk from a Windows system. It is probably NTFS, but that isn't known for sure. I have a few Linux machines and will try to recover what I can from the drive.

gather data and verify it is broken

• It is a SATA drive, 250GB
• It spins up when power is applied
• Linux recognizes the drive and assigns it /dev/sdf
• I try to mount it as NTFS:

mount -t ntfs /dev/sdf /mnt/bob
Error reading bootsector: Input/output error
Failed to mount '/dev/sdf': Input/output error
NTFS is either inconsistent or there is a hardware fault... 

• I try to mount it as msdos:

mount -t msdos /dev/sdf /mnt/bob
mount: /dev/sdf: can't read superblock

• I try to mount it as vfat:

mount -t vfat /dev/sdf /mnt/bob
mount: /dev/sdf: can't read superblock

After verifying that the disk is really bad, I wrapped it in plastic, then in paper towels, then in a ziplock bag and put it in the freezer while I look for better tools to tell me what is going on.

new tools

I added a few packages that were not installed on my system.

disktype

Detect format on a disk or partition. http://disktype.sourceforge.net

testdisk

Data recovery tool.

GSmartControl

Graphical tool to get information from disks with smart monitoring.

mount frozen drive

Plugged the drive in after freezing it. Linux was unable to identify it. Lots of messages about hard resetting link. Link is slow to respond, please be patient. SRST failed (errno=-16)

Freezing it seems to have made it worse.

It comes up to speed on both tries.

Leaving it on until it comes up to temperature.