Urgent: Need help with hardware

[Geoff Shang]

Hello,

I have an important hard drive that may or may not be working, and two 
computers which I can't get to boot.  I need to get this all resolved as 
it's affecting my ability to work.  I'm happy to consider paid assistance at 
this point.

The short version:

I've got a drive that has my home directory plus a bunch of other data which 
I currently can't access because I can't get either of the two computers 
I've tried to put it in to see it, or even boot at this stage.  My most 
urgent need is to get data which will allow me to write my invoices.  Being 
blind and not able to see things like the BIOS screen is proving very 
frustrating right now, though I'm pretty sure that one of the boxes is now 
showing nothing on the screen when I try to boot it.  I don't know whether 
this drive is having problems or if the problems lie with the computers.

Long version:

I have 3 drives and two computers here att issue.  I'll give all these items 
labels in order to make it easier to understand.

Drive A is a 2 GB (yes) Western Digital from 1998 that was up until 2 weeks 
ago my root device.

Drive B is an 80 GB Western Digital that's about 3 or 4 years old and 
contains most of my data.

Drive C is a 120 GB Western Digital drive which used to have a Windows XP 
installation and which I'm now attempting to use as my new root disk.

Computer 1 is my former workstation, a 450 mHz machine with something like 
256 MB RAM.

Computer 2 is a machine that used to run Windows XP, and is a P4 3.0 gHz box 
with 1 GB RAM.

 Up until Monday two weeks ago, I was happil using computer 1 with drives A 
and B as my workstation. I use Debian in text-only mode so this machine was 
perfectly capable of fulfilling my needs.

On Monday the 23rd, we had a scheduled power outage for maintenance, which 
left us without power for something like 5 hours.

When power was restored, computer 1 would no longer boot.  I had thought at 
the time that this might be because the BIOS battery was dead, though I also 
knew that Drive A was scheduled to give out at some point given its age. 
The computer place I took the machine to wasn't very helpful in saying what 
they did to get it to boot, but they did say that the battery had not been 
the problem (though they did replace it anyway).

When I got it back, I found the computer trying to boot from drive A and not 
succeeding very well due to read errors (it couldn't cleanly load in 
applications, etc), and unable to see drive B at all.

I decided that now would be a good time for an upgrade, so I decided to take 
Drive C out of a former Windows box (computer 2) which we'd retired last 
year due to its tendancy to have trouble booting, something I really should 
probably have investigated thoroughly at the time.

After a bit of fun and games, I managed to get the Debian Lenny NetInst CD 
to boot and see Drive C and install the system.  However, it still did not 
see Drive B.  Having done this, however, I was then unable to boot the 
installed system from drive C, and I found out through some sighted 
assistance that the BIOS would not detect either drive, even though the 
Debian installer could see drive C.

Deciding that this might be a case of the BIOS not being able to cope with 
such large drives, I put the two drives into computer 2 which was where 
drive C had originally come from.  This computer also contains an 80 GB SATA 
drive which it would be nice to use at some point, but it's not important 
right now.

I was able to boot Computer 2 a number of times, and it successfully ran the 
Debian installation on Drive C.  It still would not detect drive B however, 
which is what \I really need to access in the short term.

I thought perhaps that some BIOS settings might mean that the computer was 
not able to see drive B, so I tried putting it onto the controller where the 
optical drives were being detected (remember I'm not able to see the BIOS 
screen so can't just go in and try to find it there).

At this point, the machine stopped booting, and no amount of moving things 
around or reverting to previously known good configurations seems to make it 
want to boot.  As mentioned above, it looks to my poor eyesight that the 
screen is blank now.

This may be a reoccurance of the previous booting problems this computer 
used to have, or it may be that I've messed something up in there.

Drive A is formatted with EXT2.  Drive B is either EXT2 or EXT3, can't 
remember.  Drive C is EXT3 now.

My goals in order are:

1.  Determine if Drive B is functional or not.  If it is functional, get off 
it data I need for everyday work, if not then have the data on it recovered 
somehow and transferred to another drive.

2.  Copy data off drive A.  This is less important as it's mostly operating 
system stuff, and I admit that I might not get completely clean reads, but 
it would be nice to have as there is some old Email there I'd like to keep 
if possible.

3.  Determine the status of computer 2.  Try to figure out what component is 
weak and decide whether that component should be replaced or if it would be 
better to buy an upgrade PC and canibalise computer 2 for parts.  Computer 1 
is sufficiently old that I doubt that its parts will be of much use, except 
for a couple of cards that I plan to use.

4.  If computer 2 can be salvaged, there are a couple of things I'd like to 
do such as getting the PC speaker to work and, if the IDE drive can also be 
salvaged, seeing if we can get both IDE drives and the SATA drive to operate 
at once.

In doing this, I would like to be able to reuse any hardware that it makes 
sense to retain.  I am not really in a position to be spending money on 
this, however I realise the need to get back up and working again.  I don't 
want to go throwing away perfectly good hardware however.  Determining the 
faulty component in computer 2 may allow us to go with just a case or just a 
motherboard/processor etc.

This is a matter of some urgency.  It is affecting my ability to work and my 
ability to bill for the work I have done.  I am looking for help, free or 
paid, or recommendations for where I might get such help.  I am blind and 
don't speak much Hebrew.  Someone who can come to me in Ra'anana would be 
ideal, though I'm prepared to take my gear somewhere if that makes more 
sense.

Please feel free to write back with questions or suggestions, or you can 
call me on 052 853 2827.

Thanks in advance,
Geoff.