Re: [gentoo-user] Re: USB drive dead? (Commands to check?)
On Sun, 20 Sep 2009 11:41:09 -0700, Mark Knecht wrote: Turns out none of the backup or Myth files were savable in any practical manner of speaking. Myth could play them, or at least start playing them - I don't know if it could get to the end of any of them, but if I tried to copy them off to another drive the machine just started hanging with lots of dmesg drive errors. None of the previous windows backups were savable. I've taken new windows backups starting last night. Did you try photorec as previously suggested? When a drive starts behaving like this, retrieving the data should be the first thing you try. Repairing the filesystem should be the last because you run the risk of causing further damage. Photorec can retrieve files that are inaccessible through the filesystem. -- Neil Bothwick WinErr 013: Unexpected error - Huh ? signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: USB drive dead? (Commands to check?)
On Mon, Sep 21, 2009 at 1:21 AM, Neil Bothwick n...@digimed.co.uk wrote: On Sun, 20 Sep 2009 11:41:09 -0700, Mark Knecht wrote: Turns out none of the backup or Myth files were savable in any practical manner of speaking. Myth could play them, or at least start playing them - I don't know if it could get to the end of any of them, but if I tried to copy them off to another drive the machine just started hanging with lots of dmesg drive errors. None of the previous windows backups were savable. I've taken new windows backups starting last night. Did you try photorec as previously suggested? When a drive starts behaving like this, retrieving the data should be the first thing you try. Repairing the filesystem should be the last because you run the risk of causing further damage. Photorec can retrieve files that are inaccessible through the filesystem. -- Neil Bothwick I haven't tried it yet. I don't like installing extra softwrae on the Myth backend so I disconnected the drive, used this old 1394 drive as a replacement and now have the old drive back here in my office. I figure I'll install Photorec et all next weekend on my AMD64 box and see what it can find. Cheers, Mark
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: USB drive dead? (Commands to check?)
On 20 Sep 2009, at 01:01, Mark Knecht wrote: On Sat, Sep 19, 2009 at 4:48 PM, Volker Armin Hemmann volkerar...@googlemail.com wrote: SNIP seriously, I think you should try to get off everything you want to keep - and then replace the disk with a new one. If a disk starts throwing block errors it will only become worse. Don't worry about 'repairing' the file system as long as there is hardware damage. Try to get off the disk as much as possible - and then scrap it. I suspect you're right. It's just another $100 to go buy a new one Anyway, I'll see what I can set up to save the files that are still there. Although he seems to be demonstrating in this thread an inability to snip long sections of quoted text, leaving the reader with many lines of irrelevance to scroll through, I agree with Volker. If the drive fails you're going to be spending $100, anyway. If it fails without having been replaced your data pulled off it then you could find yourself floating down Effluent River and unable to start your outboard. I think this drive is quite likely to fail catastrophically, from my experience of having seen similar errors in the past. I really wouldn't trust this drive with important data right now. If you get your data off it and replace it in it's current capacity, there's nothing stopping you using it as a secondary drive in the future; I wouldn't trust it with important data right now, but if it's still chugging away in 6 months time then you can probably begin to have faith in it. Once you've gotten your data off the drive it wouldn't do any harm to format it nice with a clean filesystem; and writing a bunch of big unimportant files on the drive (e.g. `dd if=/dev/zero of=/ mnt/sda1/foo`) might allow it to map away a bunch of bad sectors. But right now you should probably act like the drive is definitely hosed. I don't think you should be saying oh, this might cost me $100, I hope it doesn't - you should be saying s#!t d...@mn! I had to buy a new hard-drive. But at least my data's ok. But maybe data isn't as important to you as it is to me. Relying on this drive for the backups of your Windows machines right now would be a mockery; around here sod's law would conspire for me to need one of those backups, were I to continue using a drive showing errors like this. I write as a guy you just bought yet another 500gb drive on Friday; I would too have preferred not to spend that money, but experience shows that frugality can sometimes be a mistake. Stroller.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: USB drive dead? (Commands to check?)
On Sun, Sep 20, 2009 at 3:24 AM, Stroller strol...@stellar.eclipse.co.uk wrote: On 20 Sep 2009, at 01:01, Mark Knecht wrote: On Sat, Sep 19, 2009 at 4:48 PM, Volker Armin Hemmann volkerar...@googlemail.com wrote: SNIP seriously, I think you should try to get off everything you want to keep - and then replace the disk with a new one. If a disk starts throwing block errors it will only become worse. Don't worry about 'repairing' the file system as long as there is hardware damage. Try to get off the disk as much as possible - and then scrap it. I suspect you're right. It's just another $100 to go buy a new one Anyway, I'll see what I can set up to save the files that are still there. Although he seems to be demonstrating in this thread an inability to snip long sections of quoted text, leaving the reader with many lines of irrelevance to scroll through, I agree with Volker. If the drive fails you're going to be spending $100, anyway. If it fails without having been replaced your data pulled off it then you could find yourself floating down Effluent River and unable to start your outboard. I think this drive is quite likely to fail catastrophically, from my experience of having seen similar errors in the past. I really wouldn't trust this drive with important data right now. If you get your data off it and replace it in it's current capacity, there's nothing stopping you using it as a secondary drive in the future; I wouldn't trust it with important data right now, but if it's still chugging away in 6 months time then you can probably begin to have faith in it. Once you've gotten your data off the drive it wouldn't do any harm to format it nice with a clean filesystem; and writing a bunch of big unimportant files on the drive (e.g. `dd if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/sda1/foo`) might allow it to map away a bunch of bad sectors. But right now you should probably act like the drive is definitely hosed. I don't think you should be saying oh, this might cost me $100, I hope it doesn't - you should be saying s#!t d...@mn! I had to buy a new hard-drive. But at least my data's ok. But maybe data isn't as important to you as it is to me. Relying on this drive for the backups of your Windows machines right now would be a mockery; around here sod's law would conspire for me to need one of those backups, were I to continue using a drive showing errors like this. I write as a guy you just bought yet another 500gb drive on Friday; I would too have preferred not to spend that money, but experience shows that frugality can sometimes be a mistake. Stroller. Turns out none of the backup or Myth files were savable in any practical manner of speaking. Myth could play them, or at least start playing them - I don't know if it could get to the end of any of them, but if I tried to copy them off to another drive the machine just started hanging with lots of dmesg drive errors. None of the previous windows backups were savable. I've taken new windows backups starting last night. The failing drive is now off line and the family will just have to live with less Myth recording time. I've switched to an old, slow 80GB 1394 drive vs the newer 160GB USB2 drive that failed. I guess this now comes down to having no backup for my backup system. ;-) Saving anything on hard drives always results with this risk I suppose. My daily backups are 1-2 GB in total so I guess I could start writing DVDs or something like that. Thanks to all for your inputs and ideas. Cheers, Mark
[gentoo-user] Re: USB drive dead? (Commands to check?)
On Sat, Sep 19, 2009 at 3:21 PM, Mark Knecht markkne...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, I seem to have lost an external USB drive I've been using on my MythTV backend server for video storage. What commands can I try to get it to wake up or at least show me what's working and what isn't? The drive shows under fdisk /dev/sda. I can see the large partition, and it seems to be the right size, according to fdisk anyway, but I cannot mount it using mount, and so far I cannot get e2fsck to do anything. Both of these fail: mount -t ext2 /dev/sda1 /video mount -t ext3 /dev/sda1 /video I have power cycled the drive and I've rebooted the MacMini. Nothing changed. Thanks in advance, Mark MacMini ~ # fdisk /dev/sda The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 19929. There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024, and could in certain setups cause problems with: 1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO) 2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs (e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK) Command (m for help): p Disk /dev/sda: 163.9 GB, 163928604672 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19929 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Disk identifier: 0xa9b5c6b5 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 1 19929 160079661 83 Linux Command (m for help): MacMini ~ # df Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on /dev/hda4 75890040 37169416 34865560 52% / udev 10240 156 10084 2% /dev shm 257396 0 257396 0% /dev/shm MacMini ~ # fsck -t ext3 /dev/sda fsck 1.41.3 (12-Oct-2008) e2fsck 1.41.3 (12-Oct-2008) fsck.ext3: Superblock invalid, trying backup blocks... fsck.ext3: Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/sda The superblock could not be read or does not describe a correct ext2 filesystem. If the device is valid and it really contains an ext2 filesystem (and not swap or ufs or something else), then the superblock is corrupt, and you might try running e2fsck with an alternate superblock: e2fsck -b 8193 device MacMini ~ # e2fsck -b 8193 /dev/sda e2fsck 1.41.3 (12-Oct-2008) e2fsck: Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/sda The superblock could not be read or does not describe a correct ext2 filesystem. If the device is valid and it really contains an ext2 filesystem (and not swap or ufs or something else), then the superblock is corrupt, and you might try running e2fsck with an alternate superblock: e2fsck -b 8193 device MacMini ~ # fsck -t ext3 /dev/sda1 fsck 1.41.3 (12-Oct-2008) e2fsck 1.41.3 (12-Oct-2008) fsck.ext3: Attempt to read block from filesystem resulted in short read while tr ying to open /dev/sda1 Could this be a zero-length partition? MacMini ~ # e2fsck -b 8193 /dev/sda1 e2fsck 1.41.3 (12-Oct-2008) e2fsck: Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/sda1 The superblock could not be read or does not describe a correct ext2 filesystem. If the device is valid and it really contains an ext2 filesystem (and not swap or ufs or something else), then the superblock is corrupt, and you might try running e2fsck with an alternate superblock: e2fsck -b 8193 device MacMini ~ # e2fsck -b 8193 /dev/sda e2fsck 1.41.3 (12-Oct-2008) e2fsck: Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/sda The superblock could not be read or does not describe a correct ext2 filesystem. If the device is valid and it really contains an ext2 filesystem (and not swap or ufs or something else), then the superblock is corrupt, and you might try running e2fsck with an alternate superblock: e2fsck -b 8193 device MacMini ~ # A little more info: Buffer I/O error on device sda, logical block 12 sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Result: hostbyte=0x00 driverbyte=0x08 sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Sense Key : 0x3 [current] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] ASC=0x4b ASCQ=0x0 end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 96 Buffer I/O error on device sda, logical block 12 sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Result: hostbyte=0x00 driverbyte=0x08 sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Sense Key : 0x3 [current] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] ASC=0x4b ASCQ=0x0 end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 96 Buffer I/O error on device sda, logical block 12 sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Result: hostbyte=0x00 driverbyte=0x08 sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Sense Key : 0x3 [current] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] ASC=0x4b ASCQ=0x0 end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 96 MacMini ~ # fsck -t ext3 /dev/sda1 fsck 1.41.3 (12-Oct-2008) e2fsck 1.41.3 (12-Oct-2008) fsck.ext3: Attempt to read block from filesystem resulted in short read while trying to open /dev/sda1 Could this be a zero-length partition? MacMini ~ # end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 95 __ratelimit: 58 callbacks suppressed Buffer I/O error on device sda1, logical block 16 Buffer I/O error on device sda1, logical block 17 Buffer I/O error on device sda1,
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: USB drive dead? (Commands to check?)
On Sonntag 20 September 2009, Mark Knecht wrote: On Sat, Sep 19, 2009 at 3:21 PM, Mark Knecht markkne...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, I seem to have lost an external USB drive I've been using on my MythTV backend server for video storage. What commands can I try to get it to wake up or at least show me what's working and what isn't? The drive shows under fdisk /dev/sda. I can see the large partition, and it seems to be the right size, according to fdisk anyway, but I cannot mount it using mount, and so far I cannot get e2fsck to do anything. Both of these fail: mount -t ext2 /dev/sda1 /video mount -t ext3 /dev/sda1 /video I have power cycled the drive and I've rebooted the MacMini. Nothing changed. Thanks in advance, Mark MacMini ~ # fdisk /dev/sda The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 19929. There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024, and could in certain setups cause problems with: 1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO) 2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs (e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK) Command (m for help): p Disk /dev/sda: 163.9 GB, 163928604672 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19929 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Disk identifier: 0xa9b5c6b5 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 1 19929 160079661 83 Linux Command (m for help): MacMini ~ # df Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on /dev/hda4 75890040 37169416 34865560 52% / udev 10240 156 10084 2% /dev shm 257396 0257396 0% /dev/shm MacMini ~ # fsck -t ext3 /dev/sda fsck 1.41.3 (12-Oct-2008) e2fsck 1.41.3 (12-Oct-2008) fsck.ext3: Superblock invalid, trying backup blocks... fsck.ext3: Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/sda The superblock could not be read or does not describe a correct ext2 filesystem. If the device is valid and it really contains an ext2 filesystem (and not swap or ufs or something else), then the superblock is corrupt, and you might try running e2fsck with an alternate superblock: e2fsck -b 8193 device MacMini ~ # e2fsck -b 8193 /dev/sda e2fsck 1.41.3 (12-Oct-2008) e2fsck: Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/sda The superblock could not be read or does not describe a correct ext2 filesystem. If the device is valid and it really contains an ext2 filesystem (and not swap or ufs or something else), then the superblock is corrupt, and you might try running e2fsck with an alternate superblock: e2fsck -b 8193 device MacMini ~ # fsck -t ext3 /dev/sda1 fsck 1.41.3 (12-Oct-2008) e2fsck 1.41.3 (12-Oct-2008) fsck.ext3: Attempt to read block from filesystem resulted in short read while trying to open /dev/sda1 Could this be a zero-length partition? MacMini ~ # e2fsck -b 8193 /dev/sda1 e2fsck 1.41.3 (12-Oct-2008) e2fsck: Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/sda1 The superblock could not be read or does not describe a correct ext2 filesystem. If the device is valid and it really contains an ext2 filesystem (and not swap or ufs or something else), then the superblock is corrupt, and you might try running e2fsck with an alternate superblock: e2fsck -b 8193 device MacMini ~ # e2fsck -b 8193 /dev/sda e2fsck 1.41.3 (12-Oct-2008) e2fsck: Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/sda The superblock could not be read or does not describe a correct ext2 filesystem. If the device is valid and it really contains an ext2 filesystem (and not swap or ufs or something else), then the superblock is corrupt, and you might try running e2fsck with an alternate superblock: e2fsck -b 8193 device MacMini ~ # A little more info: Buffer I/O error on device sda, logical block 12 sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Result: hostbyte=0x00 driverbyte=0x08 sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Sense Key : 0x3 [current] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] ASC=0x4b ASCQ=0x0 end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 96 Buffer I/O error on device sda, logical block 12 sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Result: hostbyte=0x00 driverbyte=0x08 sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Sense Key : 0x3 [current] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] ASC=0x4b ASCQ=0x0 end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 96 Buffer I/O error on device sda, logical block 12 sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Result: hostbyte=0x00 driverbyte=0x08 sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Sense Key : 0x3 [current] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] ASC=0x4b ASCQ=0x0 end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 96 MacMini ~ # fsck -t ext3 /dev/sda1 fsck 1.41.3 (12-Oct-2008) e2fsck 1.41.3 (12-Oct-2008) fsck.ext3: Attempt to read block from filesystem resulted in short read while trying to open /dev/sda1 Could this be a zero-length partition? MacMini ~ # end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 95 __ratelimit:
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: USB drive dead? (Commands to check?)
On Sat, Sep 19, 2009 at 3:59 PM, Volker Armin Hemmann volkerar...@googlemail.com wrote: On Sonntag 20 September 2009, Mark Knecht wrote: On Sat, Sep 19, 2009 at 3:21 PM, Mark Knecht markkne...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, I seem to have lost an external USB drive I've been using on my MythTV backend server for video storage. What commands can I try to get it to wake up or at least show me what's working and what isn't? The drive shows under fdisk /dev/sda. I can see the large partition, and it seems to be the right size, according to fdisk anyway, but I cannot mount it using mount, and so far I cannot get e2fsck to do anything. Both of these fail: mount -t ext2 /dev/sda1 /video mount -t ext3 /dev/sda1 /video I have power cycled the drive and I've rebooted the MacMini. Nothing changed. Thanks in advance, Mark SNIP I could try reinstalling the file system but I had a few backups on this drive for other systems. (non-critical, but possibly useful) I'd like to be sure I cannot recover them before I blow everything away. Thanks, Mark you might be lucky and able to use smartctl on that device. Sadly most usb converters don't support smart even when the drive does. That could tell you some more, but a quick glance says: your drive is hosed. Block errors... ugh... maybe the heads had a bit of platter contact. You can try using magicrescue - or even better photorec. they won't repair your filesystems - but they might be able to get the data off you are after. Glück Auf Volker Thanks. I'll check these apps out. So far the only life I've found is with e2fsck -b 32768 /dev/sda1. This starts finding some things that make sense name-wise but then starts complaining about other things. Again, it's just mythtv video files so those can probably just be rerecorded at some point. The backups were for my Windows machines which are working right now so as long as I make some new backups elsewhere I should be reasonably safe unless I find one day that something I need then isn't on my machine right now. Sad when your backup strategy goes against you... Again, thanks for the pointers. - Mark
[gentoo-user] Re: USB drive dead? (Commands to check?)
On 09/19/2009 03:38 PM, Mark Knecht wrote: On Sat, Sep 19, 2009 at 3:21 PM, Mark Knechtmarkkne...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, I seem to have lost an external USB drive I've been using on my MythTV backend server for video storage. What commands can I try to get it to wake up or at least show me what's working and what isn't? The drive shows under fdisk /dev/sda... I hate to be the party poop, but I suspect disk hardware failure. Can you use dd to read the raw disk? e.g. # dd if=/dev/sda of=/tmp/ddout bs=512 count=1024(or whatever)
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: USB drive dead? (Commands to check?)
On Sonntag 20 September 2009, walt wrote: On 09/19/2009 03:38 PM, Mark Knecht wrote: On Sat, Sep 19, 2009 at 3:21 PM, Mark Knechtmarkkne...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, I seem to have lost an external USB drive I've been using on my MythTV backend server for video storage. What commands can I try to get it to wake up or at least show me what's working and what isn't? The drive shows under fdisk /dev/sda... I hate to be the party poop, but I suspect disk hardware failure. Can you use dd to read the raw disk? e.g. # dd if=/dev/sda of=/tmp/ddout bs=512 count=1024(or whatever) he has block errors - dd won't help him much. ddrescue is a better choice in such circumstances.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: USB drive dead? (Commands to check?)
On Sat, Sep 19, 2009 at 4:12 PM, walt w41...@gmail.com wrote: On 09/19/2009 03:38 PM, Mark Knecht wrote: On Sat, Sep 19, 2009 at 3:21 PM, Mark Knechtmarkkne...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, I seem to have lost an external USB drive I've been using on my MythTV backend server for video storage. What commands can I try to get it to wake up or at least show me what's working and what isn't? The drive shows under fdisk /dev/sda... I hate to be the party poop, but I suspect disk hardware failure. Can you use dd to read the raw disk? e.g. # dd if=/dev/sda of=/tmp/ddout bs=512 count=1024(or whatever) Hi Walt, Don't worry about it. If it's dead it's dead. I've actually managed to make some headway. After fiddling around with e2fsck -b 32768 /dev/sda1 the drive is now mountable but running e2fsck after a reboot says the drive still has errors: MacMini ~ # e2fsck /dev/sda1 e2fsck 1.41.3 (12-Oct-2008) /dev/sda1 contains a file system with errors, check forced. Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes ^C/dev/sda1: e2fsck canceled. /dev/sda1: ** WARNING: Filesystem still has errors ** MacMini ~ # If I mount the drive I can actually see all the MythTV files and amazingly they still seem to play so I don't think the drive is dead. I got a few messages about my backup directory being hosed so I attempted to delete it. Now the drive mounts but the sizes and things are messed up: MacMini ~ # mount /dev/hda4 on / type ext3 (rw,noatime) proc on /proc type proc (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec) sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec) udev on /dev type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,size=10240k,mode=755) devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,nosuid,noexec,gid=5,mode=620) shm on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev) usbfs on /proc/bus/usb type usbfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,devmode=0664,devgid=85) /dev/sda1 on /video type ext3 (rw) MacMini ~ # df /video Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on /dev/sda1157566568 -1551528 151114116 - /video MacMini ~ # MacMini ~ # ls /video/ 1003_20090531163000.mpg.png 1042_2009061119.mpg.png 1189_20090617183000.mpg.png 1003_20090603173000.mpg.png 1042_2009091121.mpg 1189_20090619183000.mpg 1003_20090621163000.mpg.png 1042_2009091121.mpg.png SNIP 1017_20090817193000.mpg.png 1189_20090617183000.mpg lost+found 1042_2009061117.mpg.png 1189_20090617183000.mpg.100x75.png MacMini ~ # Now, my question is how can I use the file system tools to fix all the tables on this drive? I see Volker is suggesting ddrescue. As it seems I've already lost the Windows backup files but have good MYthTV files is there a way to repair the disk tables and only end up with the existing Myth files and clean tables? I don't have another disk to copy all this stuff to and the MacMini is headless and PPC-based so it's difficult to use gparted or anything like that. I think the existing Myth files are possibly small enough that I could store them temporarily on the Mac while I rebuild the USB drive. Thanks, Mark
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: USB drive dead? (Commands to check?)
On Sonntag 20 September 2009, Mark Knecht wrote: On Sat, Sep 19, 2009 at 4:12 PM, walt w41...@gmail.com wrote: On 09/19/2009 03:38 PM, Mark Knecht wrote: On Sat, Sep 19, 2009 at 3:21 PM, Mark Knechtmarkkne...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, I seem to have lost an external USB drive I've been using on my MythTV backend server for video storage. What commands can I try to get it to wake up or at least show me what's working and what isn't? The drive shows under fdisk /dev/sda... I hate to be the party poop, but I suspect disk hardware failure. Can you use dd to read the raw disk? e.g. # dd if=/dev/sda of=/tmp/ddout bs=512 count=1024(or whatever) Hi Walt, Don't worry about it. If it's dead it's dead. I've actually managed to make some headway. After fiddling around with e2fsck -b 32768 /dev/sda1 the drive is now mountable but running e2fsck after a reboot says the drive still has errors: MacMini ~ # e2fsck /dev/sda1 e2fsck 1.41.3 (12-Oct-2008) /dev/sda1 contains a file system with errors, check forced. Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes ^C/dev/sda1: e2fsck canceled. /dev/sda1: ** WARNING: Filesystem still has errors ** MacMini ~ # If I mount the drive I can actually see all the MythTV files and amazingly they still seem to play so I don't think the drive is dead. I got a few messages about my backup directory being hosed so I attempted to delete it. Now the drive mounts but the sizes and things are messed up: MacMini ~ # mount /dev/hda4 on / type ext3 (rw,noatime) proc on /proc type proc (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec) sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec) udev on /dev type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,size=10240k,mode=755) devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,nosuid,noexec,gid=5,mode=620) shm on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev) usbfs on /proc/bus/usb type usbfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,devmode=0664,devgid=85) /dev/sda1 on /video type ext3 (rw) MacMini ~ # df /video Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on /dev/sda1157566568 -1551528 151114116 - /video MacMini ~ # MacMini ~ # ls /video/ 1003_20090531163000.mpg.png 1042_2009061119.mpg.png 1189_20090617183000.mpg.png 1003_20090603173000.mpg.png 1042_2009091121.mpg 1189_20090619183000.mpg 1003_20090621163000.mpg.png 1042_2009091121.mpg.png SNIP 1017_20090817193000.mpg.png 1189_20090617183000.mpg lost+found 1042_2009061117.mpg.png 1189_20090617183000.mpg.100x75.png MacMini ~ # Now, my question is how can I use the file system tools to fix all the tables on this drive? I see Volker is suggesting ddrescue. As it seems I've already lost the Windows backup files but have good MYthTV files is there a way to repair the disk tables and only end up with the existing Myth files and clean tables? I don't have another disk to copy all this stuff to and the MacMini is headless and PPC-based so it's difficult to use gparted or anything like that. I think the existing Myth files are possibly small enough that I could store them temporarily on the Mac while I rebuild the USB drive. Thanks, Mark seriously, I think you should try to get off everything you want to keep - and then replace the disk with a new one. If a disk starts throwing block errors it will only become worse. Don't worry about 'repairing' the file system as long as there is hardware damage. Try to get off the disk as much as possible - and then scrap it.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: USB drive dead? (Commands to check?)
On Sat, Sep 19, 2009 at 4:48 PM, Volker Armin Hemmann volkerar...@googlemail.com wrote: SNIP seriously, I think you should try to get off everything you want to keep - and then replace the disk with a new one. If a disk starts throwing block errors it will only become worse. Don't worry about 'repairing' the file system as long as there is hardware damage. Try to get off the disk as much as possible - and then scrap it. I suspect you're right. It's just another $100 to go buy a new one Anyway, I'll see what I can set up to save the files that are still there. Cheers, Mark
