Recovering a HD from a defunct LVM

[andytuba]

So this isn't a Debian question per se, but w/e.

I have a hard drive that got ripped out of an LVM without properly reconfiguring it to survive on its own. I'm trying to get it to work on its own -- and preserve the data -- by hacking at it with the lvm utils.

Any ideas how to repair the lvm metadata and access the filesystem?

FYI: I tried wiping the labels from the drive (hdb1, incidentally) and recreating it as a physical volume. Hence some of the weirdness.

root@host132-68:/etc# pvs
  Incorrect metadata area header checksum
  /dev/evms/lvm2/VolGroup00/LogVol01: read failed after 0 of 4096 at 0: Input/output error
  Incorrect metadata area header checksum
  Incorrect metadata area header checksum
  Incorrect metadata area header checksum
  /dev/evms/lvm2/VolGroup00/LogVol00: read failed after 0 of 4096 at 139284381696: Input/output error
  /dev/evms/lvm2/VolGroup00/LogVol01: read failed after 0 of 4096 at 536805376: Input/output error
  /dev/evms/lvm2/VolGroup00/LogVol01: read failed after 0 of 4096 at 0: Input/output error
  Incorrect metadata area header checksum
  Incorrect metadata area header checksum
  PV             VG         Fmt  Attr PSize  PFree
  /dev/evms/hda2            lvm2 --   55.80G 55.80G
  /dev/hdb1      VolGroup02 lvm2 a-   74.53G 74.53G
root@host132-68:/etc#

[bigtomrodney]

I thought that the benefit of LVm was that if disks fail the data which is intact on the other disks will be fine. Did you try to read the disk before you made changes to it? I have in the past read LVM disks individually, though granted there were only 3 disks in the setup.

The device should be detected as part of an LVM at which point you can mount the device with the relevent filesystem. The errors above don't seem too encouragin though, particularly since you have know changed the labels.

[andytuba]

Yeah, Ida thunk I could just mount it on its own, too. I had previously just referred to it as /media/hdb1 and thrown stuff on there instead of using it as a LVM..

gonna try and mount it again, access it somehow, maybe I'll do another dumb thing and try playing with the LVM labels again.