From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Aug 24 20:25:29 2009 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 41724106568F for ; Mon, 24 Aug 2009 20:25:29 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from freebsd-questions-local@be-well.ilk.org) Received: from mail3.sea5.speakeasy.net (mail3.sea5.speakeasy.net [69.17.117.5]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1B13D8FC0A for ; Mon, 24 Aug 2009 20:25:28 +0000 (UTC) Received: (qmail 10177 invoked from network); 24 Aug 2009 20:25:28 -0000 Received: from dsl092-078-145.bos1.dsl.speakeasy.net (HELO be-well.ilk.org) ([66.92.78.145]) (envelope-sender ) by mail3.sea5.speakeasy.net (qmail-ldap-1.03) with SMTP for ; 24 Aug 2009 20:25:28 -0000 Received: by be-well.ilk.org (Postfix, from userid 1147) id B2A1F5082F; Mon, 24 Aug 2009 16:25:26 -0400 (EDT) To: Kelly Martin References: <1338880b0908241129p75b6845cg26d21804e118364@mail.gmail.com> From: Lowell Gilbert Date: Mon, 24 Aug 2009 16:25:26 -0400 In-Reply-To: <1338880b0908241129p75b6845cg26d21804e118364@mail.gmail.com> (Kelly Martin's message of "Mon\, 24 Aug 2009 12\:29\:19 -0600") Message-ID: <44y6p9q7rd.fsf@be-well.ilk.org> User-Agent: Gnus/5.11 (Gnus v5.11) Emacs/22.3 (berkeley-unix) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Cc: FreeBSD Questions Subject: Re: hard disk failure - now what? X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list Reply-To: FreeBSD Questions List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 24 Aug 2009 20:25:29 -0000 Kelly Martin writes: > I just experienced a hard drive failure on one of my FreeBSD 7.2 > production servers with no backup! I am so mad at myself for not > backing up!! Now it's a salvage operation. Here are the type of errors > I was getting on the console, over-and-over: > > ad4: TIMEOUT - WRITE_DMA48 retrying (0 retries left) LBA=441633503 > ad4: WARNING - SETFEATURES ENABLE RCACHE taskqueue timeout - > completing request directly > ad4: WARNING - SETFEATURES ENABLE WCACHE taskqueue timeout - > completing request directly > ad4: WARNING - SET_MULTI taskqueue timeout - completing request directly > ad4: FAILURE - WRITE_DMA48 timed out LBA=441633375 > g_vgs_done():ad4s1f[WRITE(offset=216338284544, length=16384)]error = 5 > > I could still login to the machine (after an eternity) but got lots of > read/write errors along the way. The offset shown in the errors kept > changing, so I thought it was a hardware eSATA controller issue > instead of a bad sector on the drive - I replaced the motherboard, > but the problem persisted. So I bought a new hard drive and have > re-installed FreeBSD 7.2 on it. I'd like to plug in the old hard drive > today, mount it and salvage as much as I can... especially the > database files, config files, etc. > > My question: what kind of checks and/or repair tools should I run on > the damaged drive after it's mounted? Or should I mount it as > read-only and start backing it up? I am hoping most of my data is > still there, but also don't want to damage it further. I desperately > need to salvage the data, what do the kind people on this list > recommend? First, try copying the entire disk, *without* mounting it. Use dd(1) to get a copy of the whole disk. I believe that "conv=noerror" may be necessary. -- Lowell Gilbert, embedded/networking software engineer, Boston area http://be-well.ilk.org/~lowell/