help! my hard drive crashed.

[osmotik]

Hi everybody, many thanks in advance for some assistance here. My hard drive (ext3) running suse 10.2 just appeared to have crashed. I cannot boot into suse anymore. I can however boot into safe mode, during which I am alerted that I have some bad sectors, that the file system is being loaded read only and some other messages.

Unfortunately, when in safe mode I can navigate to /home, but do not see my /nwebb folder inside /home (that's where I keep my files) Most is backed up, but I did just load a bunch of photos from the holidays that haven't been backed up yet!

Thanks for any advice, I really don't have the slightest where to start.

[devils casper]

Boot up from any LiveCD and execute fsck.ext3 command on /home partition.

[osmotik]

Thanks for the tip.

I tried this a using my suse (10.2) install disk and booting to rescue mode.

I log in as root, and can navigate around fine. Once again, /home has not info inside.
so I try the following

Rescue:/ # fsck.ext3 /home
e2fsck 1.39 (29-May-2006)
fsck.ext3: Is a directory while trying to open /home

The superblock could not be read or does not describe a correct ext2
filesystem ...... you might try running e2fsck with an alternate superblock:
e2fsck -b 8193 <device>


so I try

Rescue:/ # e2fsck -b 8193 /home

and I get the same response.

I also ran the SeaTool that I found on the UBCD and found that 5 sectors were bad.

Any suggestions?
Thanks.

[gogalthorp]

The best sector fix tool is Spinrite. But it is not a free program!!!

GRC*|*SpinRite 5.0 to 6.0**

If it is possible to recover the sectors Spinrite will do it. It is possible that the sectors are damaged beyond recovery. In which case the sectors are marked bad but you will have to reformat the partition. Recovery of the data can be a very difficult job. It all depends on how much the data is worth.

[Jonathan183]

Thanks for the tip.

I tried this a using my suse (10.2) install disk and booting to rescue mode.

I log in as root, and can navigate around fine. Once again, /home has not info inside.
so I try the following

Rescue:/ # fsck.ext3 /home
e2fsck 1.39 (29-May-2006)
fsck.ext3: Is a directory while trying to open /home
....

the man page indicates you should not use this on a mounted file system, and refers to /dev/hdc1 etc. Are you sure you are running this on an unmounted file system ? and calling the command correctly.

Example correct use (unmounted system) ...
desktop-linuxpc:/home/jonathan # fsck.ext3 /dev/hda9
e2fsck 1.40.2 (12-Jul-2007)
Gentoo-root (/dev/hda9): clean, 314697/1282560 files, 1067928/2602522 blocks

Example same system trying /home
desktop-linuxpc:/home/jonathan # fsck.ext3 /home
e2fsck 1.40.2 (12-Jul-2007)
fsck.ext3: Is a directory while trying to open /home

The superblock could not be read or does not describe a correct ext2
filesystem. If the device is valid and it really contains an ext2
filesystem (and not swap or ufs or something else), then the superblock
is corrupt, and you might try running e2fsck with an alternate superblock:
e2fsck -b 8193 <device>

It might be worth a double check

[osmotik]

great thanks,

I now have successfully checked the hda2 and there are many errors.

In pass 1, I see about 10 instances of error reading block - short read
In pass 2, I see directory inode 1048578, block 0, offset 0: directory corrupted

Should I just run these things through auto fix and see what happens?

[gogalthorp]

It depends on if there are low level error. Before you attempt to fix the file system you should make sure that the actually disk sectors are all right. You may have had a head crash which can cause physical damage to the surface.

I recommend that you do a low level scan and repair before attempting to do a file system repair.

I use Spinrite. I have found it well worth the money over the years. But you can normally get scanners from the drive manufacturer.

[osmotik]

I did run the SeaTools scanner, and it found about 5 bad sectors, though I chose not to do anything about them, would it be good to run this app and let it try to fix those sectors?

[gogalthorp]

Yes. Before you try fixing the file system you want to be sure that the underlying layer is fixed.

[osmotik]

looks like most everything is back, thanks to everybody for all the help

I guess it's probably time for a new drive (or use the excuse to get a whole new box)