Arch Linux

firedance

Member

From: Stockholm, Sweden

Registered: 2005-04-18

Posts: 131

Broken harddrive?

Ok, I think my harddrive is partially dead.
It won't boot anymore, grub stops in Loading Stage2 and when trying to access it from the arch ftp install cd it takes very long to run cfdisk and when i mount my /home partition i get
"EXT2-fs error (device sda4): ext2_readdir: bad page in #2353"
"ls: reading directory .: Input/output error"

fsck says
Couldn't find ext2 superblock, trying backup blocks....
fsck.ext2: bad magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/sda

Then it suggests e2fsck -b 8193 <device>

Is there a way to check the harddrive? I mean see if i can access all bits on it and not check the filesystems?
I have a knoppix cd if the arch installl cd isn't enough.

Also, when booting the arch cd it gives alot of errors
ata1.00 cmd ....
ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133
ata1.01: configured for UDMA/133
ata1: EH complete
Buffer I/O error on deice sda, logcal block 66
Are some of them, they pass by to fast for me to read them.

bones

Member

From: Brisbane

Registered: 2006-03-24

Posts: 322

Website

Re: Broken harddrive?

Have a look on your hard drives home page. You might find a small program that you put on a floppy and boot into to check the condition of your hard drive. I myself was having problems that looked like it was being caused by the hard drive failing. After doing the above it turned out to be a memory problem.

PS: I still had all my data on the disk. Running the program didn't affect the data on the disk. But I suppose there's still that risk of losing data.

---

"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return."

firedance

Member

From: Stockholm, Sweden

Registered: 2005-04-18

Posts: 131

Re: Broken harddrive?

The providers tools tests all fail, I guess the drive is dead.
I can still mount it and see the folders tho =/

Any ext2 tool that restores the files that can be restored?

somairotevoli

Member

Registered: 2006-05-23

Posts: 335

Re: Broken harddrive?

Try SpinRite
Worked wonders for me.

retsaw

Member

From: London, UK

Registered: 2005-03-22

Posts: 132

Re: Broken harddrive?

If you need to recover the data I would suggest you clone the disk/partition with ddrescue.  Once you have cloned the data to a good hard drive, you might just find that e2fsck will work, if not you can still try other tools on the cloned image without worrying about if you drive will last long enough.