Remotely shutting down the system (restarting) and instant booting

Question

Is there a way to perform a sort of "hard reset" on a remote system (running linux)? The issue i'm facing is related to one of the hard drives dying during I/O and becoming inaccessible - after reboot, the hdd simply disappears from the device list. Only when power is completely cut - it will come back alive, that is when the system is shut down and booted normally (via the according power button). This is on a server, so I always have to trip down to the server room to get it resurrected. The end result is to get all data off the drive (which, so far, i am failing to do due to the described problem).

What I want to do is somehow fully cut the power and make the system boot instantly or after a small delay. I have witnessed such functionality while performing some BIOS upgrades. It's like a bootstrap code.. first the OS is shut down (power is cut) and then after like 5 seconds the system starts booting. All input on the whole topic is very welcome (some smalltime/lowcost network ON/OFF switches, WOL, etc).

Answer 1

You could build an ITAPPMONROBOT - but the hard disk will die, probably very soon. It is unlikely that you can get much of the data off it. This assumes you already have checked connectors and cables and they are OK.

Oh, and there is dd_rescue - which ignores read errors - but I don't expect wonders in your case.