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A Method to Retrieve Data From a Failing Hard Disk

James Japan avatarPosted on by
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A Method to Retrieve Data From a Failing Hard Disk

Article first published on Aug. 29, 2015.

One of the hard disks on my Desktop PC failed (probably due to heat), the one with all my data which was the Linux /home partition. To make matters worse, after buying a new HDD and installing Fedora Linux, by mistake during the installation process I deleted the main backup of that data which was on the second hard disk!! I could only do a partial retrieval of files from the failed hard disk. The file transfer would begin well but would stop though only 10% finished. I noticed the HDD got very hot in the process.

Because my most important files are also backed up on a laptop PC, I transferred them to my Desktop PC and had enough data to be able to continue my work. I lost about 150 gigabytes of non-essential files, 15 years of photos, hundreds of music MP3 files which totaled 3 gigabytes, my entire Documents folder of 17 years of documents, and other folders and files. None of the data was vitally important for me, but nevertheless I felt bad to suffer such a loss.

DSC_9883

The next day just after waking up in the morning, I realized a way to keep the failed hard disk cool by putting it on a plastic bottle of cold water with a wet towel between the bottle and the hard disk to help transfer heat. Glory to God, it worked! I retrieved 100% of my photos and music!!

I bought a 120 gigabyte SDD to use as the root partition for my Linux OS, and used the healthy second HDD for my new /home partition. The boot time of my PC now is less than half what it was before. 🙂

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James

About James Arendt

I was raised in the Hegewisch neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois, served in the USAF from 1970 to 1974, honorably discharged and became a full-time evangelist for Christ living 40 years in Japan, 3.5 years in Russia, and a few months in other countries such as Finland, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, South Korea, Taiwan and mainland China where I also served the King of Kings, Jesus, as an Ambassador for His Kingdom. My full bio.

If you like this article and my work on this website, you can show your appreciation by sending me a gift. This website and my daily work on it adding new articles is because of faithful followers of Jesus Christ whose hearts the Lord touched to send us a gift towards our support. I'm now 73 and get only a small social security pension from the US government because I worked only 10 years under the Social Security system. My wife and I live frugally in the Philippines, where the cost of living is much lower than in the USA, but we still need to pay for the domain name, hosting fees, and visa fees. We need and appreciate your support! Thank you so much!

Even without a PayPal account you can use your credit card to send me a donation and I will get it through PayPal! Just click on the donate button and you will see an option to send through your credit card. I think a debit card will work as well.

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How do I obtain eternal life and stop worrying about death?

• Recognize you have violated in some way the laws of God. Violation of legal law is called a crime. Violation of God’s moral law is called a sin. For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; - Romans 3:23

As it is written (in the Bible), There is none righteous, no, not one: - Romans 3:10

• Recognize the penalty of sin: Death! For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. - Romans 6:23

Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned: - Romans 5:12

• Recognize Jesus is the Saviour! Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. - John 14:6

Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved. - Acts 4:12

And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house. - Acts 16:31

• Recognize our lives our sinful by nature. We can do nothing of our own to merit eternal life. Salvation is completely by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ! For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: - Ephesians 2:8

But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away. - Isaiah 64:6

Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost; - Titus 3:5

• Recognize Christ paid the sin debt we owe! But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. - Romans 5:8-9

• Recognize you must receive Christ as your personal Saviour! For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. - Romans 10:13

• Ask Jesus to be your Saviour!

Dear Jesus:

I know I am a sinner. I know if I were to die right now, I could not go to Heaven. I ask you, right now, to come into my heart, forgive me of my sin, and be my Saviour. Thank you for saving me and giving me eternal life. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

If you prayed that prayer with all sincerity, you have passed from death to life and have been born again into the family of God!

Comments

A Method to Retrieve Data From a Failing Hard Disk — 4 Comments

  1. Similarly about 7 years ago I had a laptop that crashed and kept shutting off. Propping it up on its side on an open window ledge, where a jet stream of river air flowed, I was able to restore it with some software to DVDs. It took a few days but I got back everything.

    Coincidentally I have the same desktop in the pic. About 4 years ago, I found it by the side of the road. It kept getting error messages from the bios no matter what IDE hard drive I put in. It drove me nuts for a few days, then I tried putting an old unstable laptop hard drive in running XP and it worked fine. I put 2 more IDE hard drives and a blue ray burner in and use it to this day using XP. Unknown to most people, Blue rays do work on XP but with software Xbox360 threw away.

    Every upgrade from NT based XP I see, is really Bill Gates downgrading, driving people crazy changing the names of items and where everything is in the Operating System. When you train a dog you tell it to sit and stand up at the same time, much like how Gates trains people to buy unnecessary software.

    I’ve helped lots of people UPGRADE to XP from Vista and UPGRADE to Windows7 from Windows8.

    Reply ↓

      • I may not be correctly understanding your question. The pic does not show only the hard disk! Look again. What is the hard disk sitting on? It’s sitting on a bottle of cold water, and that bottle is on top of the Desktop PC case which is clearly visible in the photo.

        Reply ↓

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