[vox-tech] Zip Disk Recovery

[Sam Peterson]

Hey peoples, I'm attempting a rescue of a 100MB iomega zip disk
formatted as HFS+ using Linux, (Knoppix 3.7 specifically, Kernel
2.4.27 i686 GNU/Linux, booted from CD on a Dell Optiplex GX 260).
Normally I've had pretty good luck using something like dd or
dd_rescue on the relevant device file (in this case, /dev/sda1).  No
such luck today I'm afraid, this disk seems very shot.  As soon as I
try to read from it, dmesg spews forth the following messages:

> sda: Unit Not Ready, sense:
> Current 00:00: sns = 70  2
> ASC=3a ASCQ= 0
> Raw sense data:0x70 0x00 0x02 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x12 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x3a 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0xff
> 0xfe 0x01 0x03 0x9e 0x01 0xce 0x78
> sda : READ CAPACITY failed.
> sda : status = 0, message = 00, host = 0, driver = 28
> Current sd00:00: sns = 70  2
> ASC=3a ASCQ= 0
> Raw sense data:0x70 0x00 0x02 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x12 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x3a 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0xff
> 0xfe 0x01 0x03 0x9e 0x01 0xce 0x78
> sda : block size assumed to be 512 bytes, disk size 1GB.
> sda: Write Protect is off
>  sda: I/O error: dev 08:00, sector 0
>  I/O error: dev 08:00, sector 0
>  unable to read partition table
> Device not ready.  Make sure there is a disc in the drive.
>  I/O error: dev 08:00, sector 0
> e1000: eth0: e1000_watchdog: NIC Link is Up 10 Mbps Half Duplex
> e1000: eth0: e1000_watchdog: NIC Link is Up 10 Mbps Half Duplex
> [drm] AGP 0.99 Aperture @ 0xf8000000 64MB
> [drm] Initialized radeon 1.7.0 20020828 on minor 0
> SCSI device sda: 196608 512-byte hdwr sectors (101 MB)
> sda: Write Protect is off
>  sda:

Shortly after which, both the console and dmesg are filled with the
following:

> ide-scsi: expected 4096 got 8192 limit 4096
> hdb: lost interrupt
> ide-scsi: The scsi wants to send us more data than expected - discarding data
> ide-scsi: [[ 28 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 8 0 0 0 ]
> ]

I can't even shutdown after this point, and the light on the internal
zip drive stays on indefinitely.  Everything still responds but all
attempts to shutdown just leave me hanging at the console.

I've tried skip=1 and skip=512 and skip=1024 with different block
sizes sent to dd and still no luck.  Basically this is for a faculty
member who's had a very important zip disk go out on her before and
had to pay $400 for data recovery.  I've tried so many times to warn
her about backup, but she doesn't listen.  It's not life and death if
this can't be done, but it seemed like an interesting challege of
sorts.

If anyone has any ideas, I'm all ears.

-- 
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| sam -- Programmer I                                                |
| University of California, Davis : Hart Interdisciplinary Programs  |
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