help! can i recover my data?

Fri Aug 14 00:05:34 EDT 2009

On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 11:11 PM, Robert La
Ferla<robertlaferla-Wuw85uim5zDR7s880joybQ at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>
> On Aug 13, 2009, at 8:11 PM, Gregory Boyce wrote:
>
>> I did some disk recovery from a failing hard drive a few months
>> back, and wrote up what I did.
>>
>> http://gdfuego.blogspot.com/2009/02/data-recovery-from-bad-disk.html
>>
>> Hopefully it'll help.
>
> That is helpful.  Thx.  I will try ddrescue.  However, I am not using
> ntfs.  I am using ext3.  Given that I ran fsck a few times and Ctrl-
> c'ed out of it because it was taking way too long with too many
> questions, I wonder if I can ever recover it.
>

They say misery loves company, so here is my write-up of my very
similar experience.  I haven't yet successfully recovered my data, so
I'm not sure if I'll be successful.

If you want to rescue a computer hard drive after it fails to boot,
then see this excellent article
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/use-ubuntu-live-cd-to-backup-files-from-your-dead-windows-computer/
and
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BootOptions

If you want to hear my latest dead computer saga, then read on.

My webserver/notebook computer was apparently running but I was having
problems with Apache and/or the Database server (but without
corresponding info in any log files).  So I rebooted the system.

The system failed to reboot with

GRUB Loading stage1.5.

GRUB loading, please wait...
Error 16
(from http://www.linuxselfhelp.com/gnu/grub/html_chapter/grub_13.html
16 : Inconsistent filesystem structure
    This error is returned by the filesystem code to denote an
internal error caused by the sanity checks of the filesystem structure
on disk not matching what it expects. This is usually caused by a
corrupt filesystem or bugs in the code handling it in GRUB. )

So, I booted from an Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope (2009-04) LIVECD to see
if I could check/repair the filesystem with fsck

sudo e2fsck -C0 -p -f -v /dev/sda1
Error reading block 252 (Attempt to read block from filesystem
resulted in short read).

/dev/sda1: UNEXPECTED INCONSISTENCY; RUN fsck MANUALLY.
    (i.e., without -a or -p options)

At this point, maybe I should have thought that it was the drive, not
the file system that was failing.  Howver, the drive in question is
only one year old (manufactured May 03, 2008, put in service
7/24/2008) Western Digital WD Scorpio WD1600BEVE-OOUYTO Enhanced IDE
2.5" (notebook) Hard Drive.  In hindsight, it appears that reliability
for this drive is pretty woeful
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductReview.aspx?Item=22-136-114&SortField=3&SummaryType=0&Pagesize=100&SelectedRating=-1&VideoOnlyMark=False&Local=y

But I soldiered on trying to recover my data.

sudo e2fsck -C0 -v /dev/sda1
e2fsck 1.41.4 (27-Jan-2009)
e2fsck: Attempt to read block from filesystem resulted in short read
while trying to open /dev/sda1
Could this be a zero-length partition?

looking at the partition with fdisk
sudo fdisk -l /dev/sda1

Disk /dev/sda1: 158.4 GB, 158492888064 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19268 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Disk /dev/sda1 doesn't contain a valid partition table

Later I booted using knoppix-v 6.0.1, and ran e2fsck again
sudo e2fsck -C0 -p -f -v /dev/hdc1
Error reading block 274 (Attempt to read block from filesystem
resulted in short read).

/dev/hdc1: UNEXPECTED INCONSISTENCY; RUN fsck MANUALLY.
    (i.e., without -a or -p options)

sudo e2fsck -C0 -f -v /dev/hdc1
e2fsck 1.41.3 (12-Oct-2008)
Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes
Error reading block 270 (Attempt to read block from filesystem
resulted in short read). Ignore error <y>? no

Error while iterating over blocks in inode 7: Attempt to read block
from filesystem resulted in short read
e2fsck: aborted

I wasn't getting anywhere, so, I got a System Rescue CD from
http://www.sysresccd.org/

Sadly, the System Rescue CD could barely recognize that my device was
even present.

I was also seeing a bunch of ATA exceptions but I learned at
http://ata.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Libata_error_messages that these
were not "errors" but rather caused by using apic or something when it
wasn't supported by the device

Anyway, getting rid of the DRDY status messages from the ATA
controller was supposedly just a matter of passing the proper boot
options to turn off APCI, and wasn't supposed to be a cause of
problems.

But, after trying to boot with noapci and other such boot options the
system still would take over 15 minutes to boot with lots of DRDY
messages or other ATA errors.  So, I began to realize that the disk
controller itself must be bad and I bought an external hard drive
enclosure so that I could mount the disk from a good system.  Checking
to make sure that I bought the right size enclosure, and the right
type (SATA v. IDE), I just found out that Enhanced IDE is different
from IDE.  Time to return the IDE enclosure and wait some more to get
an EIDE enclosure.

The drive itself is warrantied for 3 years from the date of
manufacture http://support.wdc.com/warranty/policy.asp?wdc_lang=en and
I have my original sales receipt (rare purchase from Best Buy rather
than NewEgg or TigerDirect), so I should be able to get a working
drive from WD -- but the experience has certainly cost me a lot of
time and effort.

-- 
Greg Rundlett
nbpt 978-225-8302
m. 978-764-4424
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