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So, just a light post, I upgraded my Pi4 last night and found the Linux firmware breaks a 32bit install.

I've been meaning to change to 64bit for months, but as it's my DMZ box for torrents, radicale, etc, then it's just finding the right time to convert an adhoc setup into my ansible scripts.

Luckily I had a SD backup from September to get it running again

So, what have you broken over the holidays?

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[–] irmadlad@lemmy.world 10 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago) (3 children)

I managed not to screw anything up, but I was handed a HDD from a friend of mine who is a burgeoning photographer. The drive has crashed, and I am afraid that, unless he coughs up several thousands of $$ for a professional recovery service, I am not going to be able to resurrect his drive. I've told him for at least a year to spend the money and get a nas with a Raid set up. So, over Christmas, he did purchase one. But.....too little too late for the portable drive. I always hate delivering bad news, but it is a hard lesson to learn. Usually, it just takes one time, and it's back up city from there on out. Fortunately he has partial backups on SD chips, and files spread from FB to family phones he can recoup some of his losses from.

[–] IsoKiero@sopuli.xyz 6 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

I've had some luck with portable drives by removing the drive from enclosure and attaching it directly to sata-bus instead of USB. Also, as a general rule for anyone who might stumble on this, whenever attempting recovery at first create an image (I use ddrescue) and work with that. That way you'll minimize risk of causing even more damage.

A while ago we "fixed" couple of hard drives with my brother. All of them had a single faulty diode, apparently it was a known failure point on those drives and brother found instructions online how to bypass that diode. Obviously that doesn't really fix the drives, but a small piece of wire and some soldering was enough to get drives spinning again long enough that he could copy data over to new drives.

[–] irmadlad@lemmy.world 2 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

I’ve had some luck with portable drives by removing the drive from enclosure and attaching it directly to sata-bus instead of USB

I did try removing it from the enclosure in hopes to hook it to a USB3.0 to IDE/SATA which also includes legacy stuff. However this drive (HD Passport) has the micro-b soldered onto the drive board. I've tried several different micro-b to whatever connections, but no joy. The drive won't initialize and reports a fatal hardware error when I try. When initially plugged in, you can physically feel the platter spin momentarily, and the power light comes on. But the platter will stop spinning and the power light will start blinking on and off. This drive has been beat up, dropped, etc, in a camera gear bag. I'm actually surprised it hasn't failed before now.

[–] IsoKiero@sopuli.xyz 2 points 15 hours ago

If it tries to start but doesn't do anything it's pretty much a lost cause then as the drive gets power but fails to initialize. In theory a simple broken solder joint somewhere might cause that and that might be fixable, but that requires at least somewhat decent soldering station and some experience. Or maybe you could get a donor board and swap out memory chips from the old one, but that's even more tricky. Hopefully it's not too expensive lesson.

[–] Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe 8 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

Uggh, feel bad for them.

I've tried for years to get friends and family to have their data sit in a single point in the house and use backup services. That would be a massive improvement.

Family won't listen, so I'm building minicomputers for them all that will handle it. Just have to configure their devices to store data there.

[–] Cyber@feddit.uk 1 points 13 hours ago

Just a friendly word of caution:

if they don't appreciate what you're telling them to do, ... and if the minis you're building fail to do some magic data protection that they / you hadn't thought about... it'll be your "fault"

They need to take some ownership

[–] shadshack@feddit.online 3 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

You try the freezer trick? If not, put it in a plastic bag in the freezer for a few hours. The cold can make some things work a bit better and maybe for long enough to recover what you need. Doesn't always work but it's cheaper than professional data recovery.

[–] irmadlad@lemmy.world 2 points 18 hours ago

You try the freezer trick?

Actually, as a last resort, I vacuum packed in a freezer bag, and stuck it in this afternoon.