External HDD recover

snack · 2009-08-17 14:17:18

Hello, a friend of mine gave me an external HDD which does not work, to try to recover data. He said that he used it with a mac, so I supposed that it uses an HFS+ filesystem: I tried to mount with -t hfsplus but I got an error like "wrong filesystem, invalid option or damaged superblock" (sorry, I'm translating from Italian since mount outputs in Italian). Trying with fdisk -l I get:

/dev/sdb1               1       24791   199133676    7  HPFS/NTFS

so it looks like an ntfs disk. Mounting with -t ntfs-3g gives:

$ sudo mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sdb1 /media/temp
NTFS signature is missing.
Failed to mount '/dev/sdb1': Invalid argument
The device '/dev/sdb1' doesn't seem to have a valid NTFS.
Maybe the wrong device is used? Or the whole disk instead of a
partition (e.g. /dev/sda, not /dev/sda1)? Or the other way around?

So I thought that maybe the filesystem is wrong; so I tried with fsck:

$ sudo fsck -N /dev/sdb1
fsck 1.41.8 (11-July-2009)
[/sbin/fsck.ext2 (1) -- /dev/sdb1] fsck.ext2 /dev/sdb1

This time it seems an ext2 filesystem... Useless to say that mounting with -t ext2 does not produce any result: same "wrong filesystem, invalid option or damaged superblock" error produced by HFS+. I tried many diagnostic and recovery programs:

$ sudo tune2fs -l /dev/sdb1
tune2fs 1.41.8 (11-July-2009)
tune2fs: Bad magic number in super-block durante l'apertura di /dev/sdb1
Impossibile trovare un valido superblocco per il filesystem.

$ sudo e2fsck -f /dev/sdb1
e2fsck 1.41.8 (11-July-2009)
e2fsck: Superblock invalid, trying backup blocks...
e2fsck: Bad magic number in super-block durante l'apertura di /dev/sdb1

Il superblocco è illeggibile, o non descrive un corretto filesystem ext2
Se il device è valido e contiene realmente un filesystem ext2
(e non swap, ufs o altro), allora il superblocco è corrotto, e si potrebbe
provare ad eseguire e2fsck con un superblocco alternativo:
    e2fsck -b 8193 <device>

(I think the italian error messages are not very significative, the essence is in the english sentences... Anyway I can translate if someone thinks it would be useful). I tried e2fsck with various superblock offsets: 8193, 16385, 32768; same result.

What do you think? Are there some hopes to recover the disk? I'm quite desperate about it...
Thanks to everyone!

fukawi2 · 2009-08-17 23:20:44

Try:

file - < /dev/sdb1

snack · 2009-08-18 06:54:09

fukawi2 wrote:

Try:

file - < /dev/sdb1

This is the result:

$ file - < /dev/sdb1
/dev/stdin: data

Not so useful, I think... then I tried:

$ file - < /dev/sdb
/dev/stdin: x86 boot sector; partition 1: ID=0x7, starthead 1, startsector 63, 398267352 sectors, code offset 0xc0

This contains more information.

In the meantime I'll give you some details about the disk: it's a Maxtor parallel ATA drive in a 3.5" enclosure, with an USB interface. I have a question: do I need ATA drivers to make it work? I think I don't have them on my laptop, but since it has an USB interface they are not needed, right?

Last edited by snack (2009-08-18 06:56:02)

pheon · 2009-08-18 07:16:57

Are you sure, the partition is formatted as hfsplus an not just hfs (mount -t hfs /dev...) ?
Partition Type 0x7 is afaik used by HFS, HFS+, NTFS and some OS/2 stuff....

BR

snack · 2009-08-18 07:22:01

pheon wrote:

Are you sure, the partition is formatted as hfsplus an not just hfs (mount -t hfs /dev...) ?
Partition Type 0x7 is afaik used by HFS, HFS+, NTFS and some OS/2 stuff....
BR

I tried, but got the same "wrong filesystem, invalid option or damaged superblock" error. Here's the output of dmesg | tail:

$ dmesg | tail
sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 27 00 00 00
sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
 sdb: sdb1
sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI disk
hfs: can't find a HFS filesystem on dev sdb1.
hfs: can't find a HFS filesystem on dev sdb1.
hfs: unable to find HFS+ superblock
hfs: can't find a HFS filesystem on dev sdb1

(I also tried to mount it with hfsplus, by the way). Are hfs and hfsplus supported by the standard kernel (2.6.30) or do I have to insert some module before mounting?

fukawi2 · 2009-08-18 08:51:19

snack wrote:

do I need ATA drivers to make it work? I think I don't have them on my laptop, but since it has an USB interface they are not needed, right?

Correct, the enclosure handles the ATA stuff and just presents a USB interface to the kernel.

If the partition is recoverable, it should just be a matter of figuring out the correct partition type and mounting options... If it's not recoverable, you'll be getting errors like what you've posted. AFAIK, JFS presents as 'data' when you typify it with 'file' but I highly doubt a Mac user would have a JFS formatted partition.

snack · 2009-08-18 09:24:03

fukawi2 wrote:

If the partition is recoverable, it should just be a matter of figuring out the correct partition type and mounting options... If it's not recoverable, you'll be getting errors like what you've posted. AFAIK, JFS presents as 'data' when you typify it with 'file' but I highly doubt a Mac user would have a JFS formatted partition.

I tried to mount with -t jfs, same error as you can easily figure out. And I don't think an average mac user like my friend could know which file system is on its drive (I think that he doesn't even know that a thing called "file system" actually exists...).
I'm not an expert of HDD recover, but I strongly fear that there are no hopes...

Arch Linux

#1 2009-08-17 14:17:18

External HDD recover

#2 2009-08-17 23:20:44

Re: External HDD recover

#3 2009-08-18 06:54:09

Re: External HDD recover

#4 2009-08-18 07:16:57

Re: External HDD recover

#5 2009-08-18 07:22:01

Re: External HDD recover

#6 2009-08-18 08:51:19

Re: External HDD recover

#7 2009-08-18 09:24:03

Re: External HDD recover

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