Hi Andre, I've had a bit of recent experience with similar problems, and there are a few things you can try.
> I tried fsck /dev/hdc1 and got the superblock error with > short read and a suggestion to try...... > fsck /dev/hdc1 -b 8193 and get the same error. Check out the e2fsck man page for the -B and -b options and try a few combinations if you don't know the block size of your filesystem. -b 8193 is a good suggestion, but it might not be quite right for your filesystem. There are usually a few superblock duplicates on the HDD, so with a bit of prodding you could find one that's good. Familiarise yourself with fsdebug too, it can be a godsend for a quick partial recovery. > When I ran fdisk /dev/hdc and used the P command it showed to > drive as having no partitions. Sounds like your partition table might be bad (yes, I'm probably stating the obvious). If it's anything like the problem I had, and the symptoms are similar, the first few sectors of the disk may be stuffed, taking the partition table and the start of the first partition. Gpart may be able to guess your partition table setup and restore it, but if the start of the disk is bad, then it won't be able to repair the damage. In that situation, there are some tools that you may or may not have success with to copy the remaining pieces of the file system elsewhere (e2retrieve comes to mind, though I didn't manage to get it working for me). > So, Can I just create a partition with fdisk and run fsck > again to repair? You could try. In theory, I don't think it would make things any worse, but please don't take my word for it. I would certainly go for other options first. > Do I have to mkfs again? Mkfs, I believe, will rewrite stuff that you probably don't want to use. As a last resort if it's necessary to start over, but I'd be very suspicious of that disk. > What options or methods would you use in this situation? Backups, google, slug, praying and/or punching things, in approximately that order. :) Oh, and don't persist with dodgy bits of hardware, as the headaches come back. > Even if the top level directories and files where > unrecognisable I could still make sense of the lower > directories and file which should remove intact after repair? Depends on what broke. Fsck put 7000 entries in my /lost+found once, representing /dev, /etc and some other key stuff. It wasn't worth trying to recover. On the other hand, my home directory, in a separate incident, was in lost+found and I was able to simply move it back to where it was supposed to be. Hope that helps. Disclaimer: I don't recommend you try any of the above, I'm not an expert by any means. I hope that someone else with more experience can clarify/correct. - Rog -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
