Problem with external ext4 HDD

flight243 · 2010-05-06 18:47:44

Hi Arch community!

I have an Arch installation on a 40GB IDE hdd, in an old desktop working flawlessly. This morning I removed the hard drive from the computer and put it in an external enclosure to connect it via USB to another PC, also running Arch. However there's now way to access the disk and its partitions using the external enclosure. According to dmesg the disk could be damaged, but to ensure this I placed it back on the old computer and everything works perfect. Arch loads and I can access my files and folders.

I have no idea of the reason of this behaviour. Can you help me??

Here are the dmesg messages:

scsi 6:0:0:0: Direct-Access     Maxtor 6 E040L0           0811 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0
sd 6:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg1 type 0
usb-storage: device scan complete
sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] 78165360 512-byte logical blocks: (40.0 GB/37.2 GiB)
sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Test WP failed, assume Write Enabled
sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Test WP failed, assume Write Enabled
sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
sdb: sdb1 sdb2 < sdb5 >
sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Test WP failed, assume Write Enabled
sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI disk
usb 1-1: USB disconnect, address 2
sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Unhandled error code
sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Result: hostbyte=0x07 driverbyte=0x00
sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] CDB: cdb[0]=0x28: 28 00 00 1f de 41 00 00 40 00
end_request: I/O error, dev sdb, sector 2088513
Buffer I/O error on device sdb5, logical block 0
Buffer I/O error on device sdb5, logical block 1
Buffer I/O error on device sdb5, logical block 2
Buffer I/O error on device sdb5, logical block 3
Buffer I/O error on device sdb5, logical block 4
Buffer I/O error on device sdb5, logical block 5
Buffer I/O error on device sdb5, logical block 6
Buffer I/O error on device sdb5, logical block 7
sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Unhandled error code
sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Result: hostbyte=0x01 driverbyte=0x00
sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] CDB: cdb[0]=0x28: 28 00 00 1f de 81 00 00 40 00
end_request: I/O error, dev sdb, sector 2088577
Buffer I/O error on device sdb5, logical block 8
Buffer I/O error on device sdb5, logical block 9
sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Unhandled error code
sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Result: hostbyte=0x01 driverbyte=0x00
sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] CDB: cdb[0]=0x28: 28 00 00 1f de c1 00 00 40 00
end_request: I/O error, dev sdb, sector 2088641

and this is the output from parted

    GNU Parted 1.9.0
    Using /dev/sdb
    Welcome to GNU Parted! Type 'help' to view a list of commands.
    (parted) print                                                           
    Model: Maxtor 6 E040L0 (scsi)
    Disk /dev/sdb: 40.0GB
    Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
    Partition Table: msdos

    Number  Start   End     Size    Type      File system     Flags
    1      32.3kB  1069MB  1069MB  primary   linux-swap(v1)  boot
    2      1069MB  40.0GB  38.9GB  extended
    5      1069MB  40.0GB  38.9GB  logical   ext3

    (parted)

The particion showed above is formatted in ext4 instead of ext3 as Parted displays.

Instead of connecting the enclosure while running Arch on another computer I also tried to boot it up directly using the Grub installed on the disk, and it doesn't even load Grub properly, displaying an Error 18.
I also tried a fsck on the disk but it also failed.

What could I do to access my data via USB without formatting?

Thanks in advance,

Alex.

flight243 · 2010-05-07 11:39:41

The disk has died
I can't make it work today either connected to the motherboard or via USB and all my data is there!!
Anyone can help me on how to recover the data?

Thanks in advance

PaulStogov · 2010-05-07 11:59:50

So what is in your dmesg now?
First of all you should get another HDD >= 40 Gb and try make a copy with dd.

flight243 · 2010-05-07 12:13:11

PaulStogov wrote:

So what is in your dmesg now?
First of all you should get another HDD >= 40 Gb and try make a copy with dd.

Thanks for your reply Paul. My dmesg is the same now... Connected to the old computer I tried to fsck and got this:

Attempt to read block from filesystem resulted in short read while trying to open /dev/sda5 Could this be a zero-length partition?

I'm googling for some info now. Some people with similar issues got them solved by using testdisk, but definitely I should make a copy with dd first...

flight243 · 2010-05-07 14:10:36

Just passed testdisk, first looking for superblocks, and then looking for partitions. Here's the output

Ext2 superblock found at sector 32768000 (block=4096000, blocksize=4096)
  Linux                  130   1  1  4864 254 63   76067712
superblock 32768, blocksize=4096 []
superblock 98304, blocksize=4096 []
superblock 163840, blocksize=4096 []
superblock 229376, blocksize=4096 []
superblock 294912, blocksize=4096 []
superblock 819200, blocksize=4096 []
superblock 884736, blocksize=4096 []
superblock 1605632, blocksize=4096 []
superblock 2654208, blocksize=4096 []
superblock 4096000, blocksize=4096 []

Current partition structure:
 1 * Linux Swap               0   1  1   129 254 63    2088387
 2 E extended               130   0  1  4864 254 63   76067775
No EXT2, JFS, Reiser, cramfs or XFS marker
 5 L Linux                  130   1  1  4864 254 63   76067712
 5 L Linux                  130   1  1  4864 254 63   76067712

And finally the error.

This partition ends after the disk limits. (start=2361681, size=76067712, end=78429392, disk end=78165360)
Disk /dev/sdc - 40 GB / 37 GiB - CHS 4865 255 63
Check the harddisk size: HD jumpers settings, BIOS detection...
The harddisk (40 GB / 37 GiB) seems too small! (< 40 GB / 37 GiB)
The following partition can't be recovered:
     Linux                  147   2  1  4882   0 63   76067712
     EXT3 Large file Sparse superblock Recover, 38 GB / 36 GiB

Parted also displays the following message

Any other idea?

PaulStogov · 2010-05-07 14:52:30

OK, I'm not specialist with HDD FS failures but this is what I would do:

0. Wait for someone's else advice.
1. Make a copy of the harddisk with dd and look on this cloned disk with fsck and gparted - maybe it will give some useful information.
2. Then run fdisk with your broken HDD and re-create _exactly_ the same partition table as you did once. It might help _or_ destroy all the data on the disk.

And look here: http://kezhong.wordpress.com/2009/06/27 … -recovery/
There is about EXT3 filesystem superblock recovery.

Last edited by PaulStogov (2010-05-07 14:58:49)

Arch Linux

#1 2010-05-06 18:47:44

Problem with external ext4 HDD

#2 2010-05-07 11:39:41

Re: Problem with external ext4 HDD

#3 2010-05-07 11:59:50

Re: Problem with external ext4 HDD

#4 2010-05-07 12:13:11

Re: Problem with external ext4 HDD

#5 2010-05-07 14:10:36

Re: Problem with external ext4 HDD

#6 2010-05-07 14:52:30

Re: Problem with external ext4 HDD

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