[wplug] fsck.ext3

[Frank W. Holden Jr.]

Bill Moran wrote:
> On Mon, 06 Mar 2006 16:28:26 -0500
> "Frank W. Holden Jr." <frank.holden at comcast.net> wrote:
>> Jonathan S. Billings wrote:
>>> Frank W. Holden Jr. wrote:
>>>> HOWDY people. I have been having problems with a hard drive and I want
>>>> to get the data off of it. The problem is it tells me that it can not
>>>> read the super block, how can I figure out what the value is of the next
>>>> super block??? I seem to remember that it was a five digit number, but
>>>> for the life of me I can not remember what that number was when I
>>>> formatted the drive. Is there a sane way to figure this out??? OR do I
>>>> lose all my data???
>>>>
>>>> The hard drive is a Western Digital 160GB EIDE with 1 partition
>>>> formatted with ext3...
>>> The location of the superblock depends on the block size that was used
>>> when creating the filesystem.  Most large filesystems are created with a
>>>  4k block size, so it'd be -b 32768.  If that doesn't work, try -b 8193
>>> (1k block size) and -b 16384 (2k block size).
>>>
>>> If none of those work, make sure that the offset you are using is right,
>>> that the partition table is correct and that the disk's filesystem was
>>> *really* ext3.
>>>
>> Thanks for responding so fast Jonathan!
>>
>> I have tried all 3 of these values and get the same answer:
>>
>> <-QUOTE->
>> frankh at mach4:~$ sudo fsck.ext3 -b 32768 /dev/hdc1
>> e2fsck 1.38 (30-Jun-2005)
>> fsck.ext3: No such file or directory while trying to open /dev/hdc1
>>
>> 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>
>> </-QUOTE->
>>
>> This drive worked up until 3-4 days ago... I noticed at that time that 
>> it came up for an auto check because of the number of mounts. I had to 
>> reboot to bring up the new kernel upgrade. It was checked and mounted. 
>> I added files to it and the next day boot up, since that point it 
>> hasn't worked. If it helps, the only thing that has been done to it is 
>> moving files onto it from a W2K machine via Samba prior to the 
>> incident nearly daily...
>>
>> Any other takers for this problem?
>> Frank
> 
> Read the error message:
> "No such file or directory while trying to open /dev/hdc1"
> 
> Failed controller maybe?  Operator error?  (do you have /dev/hdc?)
> 
Thanks Bill... The controller should be working. I have a CDROM on it 
that does. That and I can talk to the drive via fdisk and see the 
partition.

Failed controller maybe? Always a possibility, but with a working 
CDROM attached shouldn't be.

Operator error? You bet it could be!!! hehehe...


Frank