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benm

Member

Registered: 2021-03-28

Posts: 90

[SOLVED] Bad Superblock on /dev/sda

I used pacman -Syu yesterday and forgot about watching it finish (so there may have been prompts or warnings I missed). When I woke up this morning my computer would not wake from sleep so I held the power button to power down and reboot. When I powered back up, I got many errors on my /dev/sda2 partition and was unable to boot. The system put me into a limited shell telling me to run fsck manually, which ultimately failed reporting a bad superblock.

This is an ext4 filesystem.

I followed instructions I read elsewhere for running e2fsck -b to recover from a backed up super block but of the 5 or 6 backup blocks, none would recover.

Anyone have any suggestions beyond completely repartitioning the drive and reinstalling Arch?

Edit: note,  the e2fsck -b recovery attempt was done using an environment from the arch installation media

Last edited by benm (2022-03-14 14:28:53)

seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 75,838

Re: [SOLVED] Bad Superblock on /dev/sda

Is sda2 the boot or the root partition?
Before wasting more time you should certainly inspect the disks health status, https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/SMART (do not go by the summary, "smartctl -a /dev/sda" will have relevant entries in fields for bad/re-allocated/pendign sectors! In doubt, post the output)

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benm

Member

Registered: 2021-03-28

Posts: 90

Re: [SOLVED] Bad Superblock on /dev/sda

Excellent advice. Thank you for keeping me from wasting my time.

sda2 is the root partition.

SMART test reveals drive failure. Unless you know something I don't my assumption is that I just need to replace the drive and restore data from backups.

smartctl -a /dev/sda2:

smartctl 7.2 2020-12-30 r5155 [x86_64-linux-5.16.4-arch1-1] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-20, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family:     Marvell based SanDisk SSDs
Device Model:     SanDisk SSD PLUS 1000GB
Serial Number:    203817A00C6A
LU WWN Device Id: 5 001b44 8bbc784d4
Firmware Version: UH5100RL
User Capacity:    1,000,207,286,272 bytes [1.00 TB]
Sector Size:      512 bytes logical/physical
Rotation Rate:    Solid State Device
Form Factor:      2.5 inches
TRIM Command:     Available, deterministic
Device is:        In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is:   ACS-2 T13/2015-D revision 3
SATA Version is:  SATA 3.2, 6.0 Gb/s (current: 6.0 Gb/s)
Local Time is:    Mon Mar 14 14:00:30 2022 UTC
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: FAILED!
Drive failure expected in less than 24 hours. SAVE ALL DATA.
No failed Attributes found.

General SMART Values:
Offline data collection status:  (0x00)	Offline data collection activity
					was never started.
					Auto Offline Data Collection: Disabled.
Self-test execution status:      (   0)	The previous self-test routine completed
					without error or no self-test has ever 
					been run.
Total time to complete Offline 
data collection: 		(  120) seconds.
Offline data collection
capabilities: 			 (0x15) SMART execute Offline immediate.
					No Auto Offline data collection support.
					Abort Offline collection upon new
					command.
					No Offline surface scan supported.
					Self-test supported.
					No Conveyance Self-test supported.
					No Selective Self-test supported.
SMART capabilities:            (0x0003)	Saves SMART data before entering
					power-saving mode.
					Supports SMART auto save timer.
Error logging capability:        (0x01)	Error logging supported.
					General Purpose Logging supported.
Short self-test routine 
recommended polling time: 	 (   2) minutes.
Extended self-test routine
recommended polling time: 	 ( 182) minutes.

SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 1
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       11248
 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       63
165 Total_Write/Erase_Count 0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       2661
166 Min_W/E_Cycle           0x0032   100   100   ---    Old_age   Always       -       9
167 Min_Bad_Block/Die       0x0032   100   100   ---    Old_age   Always       -       0
168 Maximum_Erase_Cycle     0x0032   100   100   ---    Old_age   Always       -       36
169 Total_Bad_Block         0x0032   100   100   ---    Old_age   Always       -       1282
170 Unknown_Marvell_Attr    0x0032   100   100   ---    Old_age   Always       -       0
171 Program_Fail_Count      0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
172 Erase_Fail_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
173 Avg_Write/Erase_Count   0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       9
174 Unexpect_Power_Loss_Ct  0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       62
184 End-to-End_Error        0x0032   100   100   ---    Old_age   Always       -       0
187 Reported_Uncorrect      0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       64
188 Command_Timeout         0x0032   100   100   ---    Old_age   Always       -       0
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   072   054   000    Old_age   Always       -       28 (Min/Max 9/54)
199 SATA_CRC_Error          0x0032   100   100   ---    Old_age   Always       -       0
230 Perc_Write/Erase_Count  0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       1852 336 1852
232 Perc_Avail_Resrvd_Space 0x0033   100   100   005    Pre-fail  Always       -       100
233 Total_NAND_Writes_GiB   0x0032   100   100   ---    Old_age   Always       -       10139
234 Perc_Write/Erase_Ct_BC  0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       41589
241 Total_Writes_GiB        0x0030   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       13800
242 Total_Reads_GiB         0x0030   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       18524
244 Thermal_Throttle        0x0032   000   100   ---    Old_age   Always       -       0

SMART Error Log Version: 1
No Errors Logged

SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
No self-tests have been logged.  [To run self-tests, use: smartctl -t]

Selective Self-tests/Logging not supported

Ran smartctl -t short /dev/sda. Then the results with smartctl -H /dev/sda:

smartctl 7.2 2020-12-30 r5155 [x86_64-linux-5.16.4-arch1-1] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-20, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: FAILED!
Drive failure expected in less than 24 hours. SAVE ALL DATA.
No failed Attributes found.

seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 75,838

Re: [SOLVED] Bad Superblock on /dev/sda

I just need to replace the drive and restore data from backups

This

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How to upload text · How to boot w/o GUI · Disable Windows Fast-Start! · Fix your xinitrc

benm

Member

Registered: 2021-03-28

Posts: 90

Re: [SOLVED] Bad Superblock on /dev/sda

Thank you, marking solved.

Edit: a friend of mine told me he solved the same problem by replacing the SATA cable, as in his case it was a cable failure rather than a drive failure. I tested with a new cable and the drive still failed, so I am still replacing the drive, but I am editing in this final comment in case someone troubleshooting this problem in the future encounters this problem as well.

Edit 2: reinstallation is complete. The drive replacement fixed the issue.

Last edited by benm (2022-03-16 21:22:07)