How to Rescue Your Precious Essay From Your Dying/Burning/Exploding Hard Disk (Your Megabytes May Vary)

Am now retrieving data from Jitsy's hard disk. Whoa. Her hard disk is seriously KO-ed.

But really want to thank God for Weizhu's astute observation that, since I can load Windows (even though it Blue Screens every time it loads), that means that the partition table is still intact. =) Wow, really thank God for WZ's priceless guidance.

So used this Linux-based rescue CD from www.sysresccd.org.

It's really quite fun, doing something like this for the first time using Linux. Never felt so 'pro' before, haha... =) Ah. The inner geek in me is happy!

But seriously, thank God for Peter, who told me to go and help Jits 'cos her essay was due the next day. To be honest, I was telling Jits that I wouldn't be able to go over to help her 'cos Peter was shepherding me, but Peter overheard my phone conversation with her, and said, "It's ok, go and help her tonight. We'll meet again tomorrow."

Was really surprised when he said that, and so I learnt something from this - being thoughtful to the needs of others. Realised my shepherd's very wise in this area - whereas I was being inflexible to meet the needs of others (esp desperate), I was very impressed by how Peter was able to assess the situation at hand, and put others' needs above his own time and convenience. :)

So now, am still extracting the data. Some interesting things that happened:

The hard disk, at one point, suddenly started making a grinding/buzzing noise - oh, look, it started buzzing again! Figured out how to resolve that... Just gently shift the laptop around until the buzzing sound stops. And then copy the data over ASAP. I think the most likely explanation is that the drive head that reads the hard disk is jammed or something. So gently tilting the hard disk will help get the head back in alignment again. At least, that's my theory. Tried whacking the laptop too, to get rid of the buzzing sound from the hard disk, but it didn't work very well. Tilting works much better.

Oops. I shouldn't have said that. I think Jits is going to start whacking me upside down if she finds out what I did to her laptop. Oh man. It doesn't help that she's got a belt in martial arts. :S *dons helmet and body armour*

Okay, where were we now? :)

Ubuntu Linux is great for bypassing corrupted Windows systems, but when it comes to bad hard disks, you need more powerful stuff like the Linux rescue CD that I mentioned above.

And never ever try to read Word documents using Linux command lines. The screen chars go crazy when you do that.

dd_rescue is a groovy Linux tool for resurrecting dying data, or so I've been told.

[tongue-in-cheek]
A fire-extinguisher is pretty handy for burning hard-disks.

Oh, look at that small label on the laptop: "In case your laptop catches fire, please do not use water as it will damage the components inside."

Wow. Isn't it a bit redundant to worry about water damage when your lappie's burnt to a toast?[/tongue-in-cheek]