On Sat, 2004-08-14 at 17:25, Matthew Gregan wrote: > At 2004-08-14T16:04:38+1200, Nick Rout wrote: > > When I am in the livecd I tried to use file to see what was there. > > file -Ls /dev/hda1 & /dev/hda2 give the expected result (fat and linux > > swap respectively), but /dev/hda3 simply says "data" > > file(1) cannot reliably detect filesystem formats. Try using parted(8), > e.g. /sbin/parted /dev/hda print. The first thing you need to do is > work out what filesystem is on that partition. > > > I cannot mount /dev/hda3, either with or without a -t parameter. > > Without -t mount tells me I need to specify a filesystem, using -t > > reiser or -t ext3 or -t ext2 gives an error about no such filesystem > > or incorrect superblock. > > If you have space somewhere else on disk (probably on another Linux > machine), it'd be a good idea to take an image of the filesystem and > experiment on that until you've found the correct fix. > > Once you know what filesystem is on the partition, try running the > filesystem-specific fsck on the disk--obviously you'll need to do this > from a known-good bootable Linux with kernel support for that > filesystem, and preferably the last version of the filesystem-specific > tools. If the initial fsck attempt fails, you might need to provide it > with the block address of an alternate superblock--what address this is > will depend on the filesystem type and the block size used when creating > the filesystem. > > Cheers, > -mjg
nothing seemed to be able to find any filesystem "magic" on /dev/hda3, and I suspect the start of the partition has been overwritten. This is a 10G hard drive, with 5G /dev/hda1 - fat32 lba 250M /dev/hda2 linux swap 4.8 G /dev/hda3 - linux. Trouble is various partition tools seem to diagnose problems with the first partition, saying it is the wrong size. I have tried various tools from the Ultimate Boot CD, and they seem to think that fhe filesystem on the first hard drive is 10G, ie twice the size allocated in the partition table. Whats more win98 thinks its on a 10G drive and using a little over half - so I suspect that as the drive has filled up it has spilled onto /dev/hda2 and /dev/hda3, until it has over written the start of the partition. I am not sure how the system got to this point, It's my son's and I rarely use it except for the odd web browsing or helping him install games. I sometimes us it for linux when I want to test something between two systems, but I don't really need the linux partition. I may just hand change the partition table to show the whole damn disk as fat and let windows keep its damned filesystem. Annoyed of Lyttelton.
