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caligo

Member

From: Stockholm

Registered: 2010-01-10

Posts: 79

[kinda solved, hd broken]Salvaged hard drive mounted as read-only

My old netbook died recently (if a guy in a shady computer store in Edinburgh tells you that "this adapter will surely work" -- what ever you do, don't believe him). Got a new netbook, and an external usb hd case for the old hard drive in the hope of salvaging it.

The old hd seems to have survived, as it mounts just fine and all my old partitions show up (home folder, root, swap...). However, I cannot change the permissions of the files using thunar as root, nor can I copy them to my internal hd --probably because the drive is mounted as read-only. The /home partition, which is the one I'm interested in copying things from, is formated in ext4.

I'm guessing I should change something in my fstab, though I'm not sure what exactly. What's weird though is that the drive does not show up when I run sudo fdisk -l, nor does it show in gparted (which is run as root, of course) -- meaning I don't know what rule I should put in my fstab file, as I dont know what mount point to apply it to. I use xfce on my current laptop, but seeing as the problem persists when I try on my partners ubuntu laptop I figure that the DE hasn't got much to do with it.

I guess I could open up the computer, put in the old hard drive and change some configs, install drivers etc. to make my new computer boot properly from it. Does seem like a drag though, so I figured I'd try asking here first. I suspect this is a fairly common problem, but my google-fu does not appear to be strong enough as I've failed to find a solution on my own.

Last edited by caligo (2010-07-19 20:09:01)

karol

Archivist

Registered: 2009-05-06

Posts: 25,440

Re: [kinda solved, hd broken]Salvaged hard drive mounted as read-only

Even if it's read-only you can copy from it.

If I understand it correctly, your old drive is now an external drive, right?
> The old hd seems to have survived, as it mounts just fine and all my old partitions show up
So mount it 'mount /dev/sdb2 /mnt/oldhome' where /dev/sdb2 is your old home and /mnt/oldhome is the mountpoint (you have to create that directory first).

Last edited by karol (2010-07-18 13:06:32)

caligo

Member

From: Stockholm

Registered: 2010-01-10

Posts: 79

Re: [kinda solved, hd broken]Salvaged hard drive mounted as read-only

Tried it, but no luck. The /home partition appears to be /dev/sdd2, but I cannot mount it:

[martin@martins_netbook ~]$ sudo mount /dev/sdd2  /mnt/oldhome
mount: /dev/sdd2: cannot read superblock

Thunar mounts the old /home partition under /media/disk-2/, but that does not help much:

[martin@martins_netbook ~]$ sudo mv /media/disk-2/martin/ ~/Dokument/
cannot access "/media/disk2/martin": In/out-error

Also, apparently I have to wait for roughly ten minutes after unplugging the hd before I can plug it in again -- otherwise its not recognized by the system. Given what the drive has experienced, it would probably not be that surprising if it was damaged somehow.

karol

Archivist

Registered: 2009-05-06

Posts: 25,440

Re: [kinda solved, hd broken]Salvaged hard drive mounted as read-only

'mount: /dev/sdd2: cannot read superblock' is quite different from mounting read-only - I'd call it read ... NOT!
I hope you have some sort of backup.

cesura

Package Maintainer (PM)

From: Tallinn, Estonia

Registered: 2010-01-23

Posts: 1,867

Re: [kinda solved, hd broken]Salvaged hard drive mounted as read-only

# fsck /dev/sdd2

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caligo

Member

From: Stockholm

Registered: 2010-01-10

Posts: 79

Re: [kinda solved, hd broken]Salvaged hard drive mounted as read-only

'mount: /dev/sdd2: cannot read superblock' is quite different from mounting read-only - I'd call it read ... NOT!
I hope you have some sort of backup.

Yes, "cannot read" is indeed a more disheartening message... When trying to copy the files through thunar, I can see them but not move or open them -- and trying to change the permissions results in an error message about the file system being "read-only".

# fsck /dev/sdd2

results in

 Attempt to read block from filesystem resulted in short read

The thing might indeed be dead...

I have backups of all the important things -- just wanted to save some recent random files and a bunch of wallpapers, but I think I'll survive the loss. Thanks for the help guys. Might try to format the whole thing, see if its just the data that's corrupted or of the harware is busted as well.

cesura

Package Maintainer (PM)

From: Tallinn, Estonia

Registered: 2010-01-23

Posts: 1,867

Re: [kinda solved, hd broken]Salvaged hard drive mounted as read-only

Can you try:

# init 1
# fsck -f /dev/sdd2

EDIT: Wrong drive

Last edited by cesura (2010-07-18 16:19:19)

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karol

Archivist

Registered: 2009-05-06

Posts: 25,440

Re: [kinda solved, hd broken]Salvaged hard drive mounted as read-only

Google says it still can be fstab mismatch but people w/ similar problems opted for reformatting / reinstallation - quicker than figuring out what exactly went wrong and how to fix it.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions … ost1934340

Last edited by karol (2010-07-18 16:19:32)

caligo

Member

From: Stockholm

Registered: 2010-01-10

Posts: 79

Re: [kinda solved, hd broken]Salvaged hard drive mounted as read-only

Having tried your solutions and some others to no avail -- plus failing to format the drive -- I think I'll just pronounce the drive dead. Thread marked as solved.