I have one of those DELL XPS M1730 ‘s with a fried Nvidia graphics card. It still booted, but I obviously couldn’t do much, as the screen was not functioning.
These were the steps I took to access the data:
I downloaded rescuecd pld-linux , a linux live cd that has a SSH Server enabled : http://rescuecd.pld-linux.org/ and burned it to a CD.
download from here : http://rescuecd.pld-linux.org/
Then I booted the XPS from that CD. It didn’t boot right away. As I couldn’t see what was on the screen, I could only guess what it said. But pressing ESC a few time worked for me. If your laptop’s BIOS is not configured to boot from CD, you can press F12 and then one down + enter (you can’t see anything, so try to guess what order the entries in the boot menu are. Normally “CD boot” is the second entry.).
Once booted, I logged in from another PC using SSH. On windows you can use PUTY for that: http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html
Login using ‘root’ and password ‘pld’.
I wasn’t able to access the drive, cause it’s RAID0 and (in my case) wasn’t set up. To set up raid I first loaded a config into the mdadm.conf using the mdadm utility used to manage and monitor software RAID devices.
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[root@rescue Users]# mdadm -Es > /etc/mdadm.conf ARRAY metadata=imsm UUID=a38093ad:02d71bcc:36b540ef:c589efe0 ARRAY /dev/md/ARRAY container=a38093ad:02d71bcc:36b540ef:c589efe0 member=0 UUID=dc71e576:67737342:2b5b9347:0c302a3e |
I then rebooted the PC.
After it rebooted, I looked for available drives using lsblk
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[root@rescue ~]# lsblk NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO MOUNTPOINT sda 8:0 0 111.8G 0 |-sda1 8:1 0 203.9M 0 |-sda2 8:2 0 10G 0 `-sda3 8:3 0 101.6G 0 sdb 8:16 0 111.8G 0 |
I examined sdb, and it seemed to be part of a raid setup:
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[root@rescue ~]# mdadm --examine /dev/sdb /dev/sdb: Magic : Intel Raid ISM Cfg Sig. Version : 1.0.00 Orig Family : 1e5f1a10 Family : 1e5f1a10 Generation : 000025d9 UUID : a38093ad:02d71bcc:36b540ef:c589efe0 Checksum : 0c2d178c correct MPB Sectors : 1 Disks : 2 RAID Devices : 1 Disk01 Serial : 5NJ0YQHF State : active Id : 00020000 Usable Size : 234437134 (111.79 GiB 120.03 GB) [ARRAY]: UUID : dc71e576:67737342:2b5b9347:0c302a3e RAID Level : 0 Members : 2 Slots : [UU] This Slot : 1 Array Size : 468873216 (223.58 GiB 240.06 GB) Per Dev Size : 234436867 (111.79 GiB 120.03 GB) Sector Offset : 0 Num Stripes : 915768 Chunk Size : 128 KiB Reserved : 0 Migrate State : idle Map State : normal Dirty State : clean Disk00 Serial : 25DP0C30DSGK49TP State : active Id : 00000000 Usable Size : 234437134 (111.79 GiB 120.03 GB) |
I scanned for the array:
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[root@rescue /dev]# mdadm -A --scan mdadm: Container /dev/md/imsm0 has been assembled with 2 drives mdadm: Started /dev/md/ARRAY_0 with 2 devices |
Now I had a new layout for the drives, as the Array came online:
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[root@rescue /dev]# lsblk NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO MOUNTPOINT sda 8:0 0 111.8G 0 |-md127 9:127 0 0 `-md126 9:126 0 223.6G 0 |-md126p1 259:0 0 203.9M 0 |-md126p2 259:1 0 10G 0 |-md126p3 259:2 0 210.9G 0 |-md126p4 259:3 0 1K 0 `-md126p5 259:4 0 2.5G 0 sdb 8:16 0 111.8G 0 |-md127 9:127 0 0 `-md126 9:126 0 223.6G 0 |-md126p1 259:0 0 203.9M 0 |-md126p2 259:1 0 10G 0 |-md126p3 259:2 0 210.9G 0 |-md126p4 259:3 0 1K 0 `-md126p5 259:4 0 2.5G 0 |
Finally mounted the drive:
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[root@rescue /dev]# mount -t ntfs /dev/md126p3 /disk1 mount: warning: /disk1 seems to be mounted read-only. |
To get the data of, you can either use SSH or (if on windows) use WinSCP. You can donwload it here: https://winscp.net. Start WinSCP, Create a new site, fill in IP address, login and password, and connect.
Check out the man pages of the tools used:
Mdadm : https://linux.die.net/man/8/mdadm
Lsblk : https://linux.die.net/man/8/lsblk
Blkid : https://linux.die.net/man/8/blkid
Mdadm cheat Sheet : http://www.ducea.com/2009/03/08/mdadm-cheat-sheet/
Hopefully this log will help anyone. You can leave comments if you like, but I’m not experienced with mdadm. I probably can’t answers questions, but maybe other readers can. 🙂
Summary:
- write the config using mdadm -Es
- mount the array, using mount.
- Connect using WinSCP and recover the files