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.

first try

• 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.