Dead HD

[MirAGe01]

Okay, I tried installing FC3. There were some problems installing it so before the 3rd try, I ran fsck on my hard drive to check it for errors. It found some stuff and like an idiot I just went ahead and said fix it without really reading what it was doing.

I got the OS up and running but now my secondary drive (hdb) is corrupt. I can't mount it. When I try running fsck on /dev/hdb I get this message:
Couldn't find ext2 superblock, trying backup blocks...
fsck.ext: Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/hdb

Then I get the message to try an alternate superblock. I used mke2fs -n /dev/hdb to get the superblocks. I tried every one but nothing worked.

Any ideas on how to recover my data or is the drive hosed? I have a gigs of music and code I've written on that hard drive and would be very distraught if I lose it all.

[MMYoung]

This LINK may help you, but I'm not for sure. I don't know if the "bug" mentioned in this article is still around in FC3. I installed FC2 and it did change my HD geometry. I followed the suggestions in this article and was able to get everything back the way it was. If you can get it "back" be sure and make a backup of EVERYTHING on that drive, cause you just never know when something like this will happen again. And believe me, stuff happens.

HTH,
MMYoung

[cybertron]

One potential problem is that you can't fsck /dev/hdb. You need to give the specific partition you're trying to fsck, like /dev/hdb1. Maybe you can do that if there's only one partition on the drive (I don't know), but when I tried to do it on mine with multiple partitions it didn't work. IIRC the error messages were at least similar to what you're getting.

[MirAGe01]

When I fdisk -l, I'm told hdb does not contain a valid partition.

hdb is on single partition so there is no hdb1.

Thanks, MMYoung, but my problem isn't with the disk geometry getting changed. It's with the partition table getting screwed up; I think.

[MirAGe01]

Also, as the computer is booting up I can see this message:

"Buffer I/O error on device hdb, logical block 0"

[infiniphunk]

I just checked the laptop for bad blocks and e2fsck found 19 bad blocks on / and 17 of them on /home. Wow. I'm not really to sure if there's a way of fixing this, but I'm pretty sure the HDD is toast. Its a SatelliteA10; luckily there's still a warranty so looks like I'll be sending it in for a new HDD. Oh well...

[MMYoung]

Originally posted by MirAGe01
Thanks, MMYoung, but my problem isn't with the disk geometry getting changed. It's with the partition table getting screwed up; I think.

If you created those partitions before the install of FC3, and it changed the disk geometry (CHS), then the partitions created with the old geometry will be a "little confused".

[EDIT]
Did you do the fdisk -l /dev/hdb command as specified in the link and check the CHS listed to that listed on outside case of the hard drive?
[/EDIT]

Later,
MMYoung

[raz0rblade]

Originally posted by MirAGe01
Also, as the computer is booting up I can see this message:

"Buffer I/O error on device hdb, logical block 0"

That doesn't sound too good.
My HD I was given after being dropped on the ground gives those errors.

end_request: I/O error, dev hda, sector 0
Buffer I/O error on device hda, logical block 0

[XiaoKJ]

a HD with only 1 partition will still have hdb1. just that. your partition table is wrong, and since you only have hdb1, just make 1 partition to fill it all. no need to format it.

[MirAGe01]

Nothing I tried worked. I did find a free recovery tool called R-Linux , and it worked like a charm. I simply put the dead drive into my windows box and got about 98% of my data back.

Now if I can just figure out why applications crash randomly as well as the box freezing all together.