Re: [sleuthkit-users] Lost a folder on my hard drive somehow can I recover?

[Gary F. <ga...@in...>]

On 05/07/10 13:04:07, Kaya Saman wrote:
>    On 05/04/2010 05:12 PM, Kaya Saman wrote:
>      I've got an external eSATA 200GB hard drive formatted to ext3 of which I
>      was using till now via USB2.0 connection.
> 
>      I recently hooked the drive up to my FreeBSD 8.0 32bit based server in
>      ReadOnly mode upon mount in order to stream the information across my
>      network so that I wouldn't have cables flying around the place.
> 
>      Anyhow, yesterday I attached the hard drive and started watching my
>      downloaded TV show. I noticed something went out of whack after I
>      clicked incremental files and the video shown was not linear. - What I'm
>      trying to say is that the file name didn't match the file played back!!
[...]

I'd start with the hardware.  Does it improve/stay the same
when you hook it back up via e-SATA?  If it is not possible to
do that with your current hardware, then consider removing
the drive and direct connecting it.

The suggestions by the other posters to make a drive image
is a good one.  You will have both a backup and you'll
be able to run various recovery tools on that image.
You can even try mounting that image in read-only
loop back mode, and see whether you're still experiencing
problems.  If everything works fine, then it suggests
that the hardware isn't working.  Of course, if you
are able to image the drive completely that suggests
the drive is working at some level, and the failure
you're seeing becomes more difficult to explain.
That's why I'd recommend direct-connecting it,
and trying to make an image, pronto.

We have seen USB/eSATA enclosures fail in some
rather unpredictable ways.  One common failure
is the small fan that is present on some enclosures
quits spinning and either the controller electronics,
or drive overheat ... leading to erratic
results.  Power supplies (wall warts) often
seem to be the weakest link.  And those self-powered
USB drives, even with the two USB connectors
can run into problems at the margin.  Using the
supplied PSU usually fixes that problem.  Finally,
we've seen problems with Firewire/USB add on PCI
cards - they worked fine for a year/two and then
just quit working, or had glitches.