Repair partition with Knoppix?

[UnderScore]

Think about it. He has a hard drive with valuable data that either has a partially corrupted filesystem or the underlying physical disk itself is slowly dying. The absolute last thing to do to a dying hard drive is to write data to it & then expect to read that data off of it, which is really what you are suggesting. The important steps are to attempt to repair the filesystem and copy the data off.

Windows, Linux, Unix, Mainframe, Mac OS, it doesn't matter. The loading of OS is only as slow as the media on which the binaries are on. The operational speed of an OS is dependent on the system's I/O subsystems: CPU, Disk, Network. If a OS is on tape, then loading the binaries into the system's RAM is going to take longer than if the OS is on a CD. Knoppix is on CD and the loading of the binaries into the system's RAM will take longer than if they were on HD. If a OS is loaded from CD, or tape, or from HD and the binaries are loaded into RAM, then the speed of disk to disk file copies or disk to network file copies will not be impacted. And even if it were impacted, the speed difference in the end would probably be both small & irrelavant since the whole point of copying files is to recover them, not to get the quickest data throughput.

To howitzer,
If Knoppix (Linux) is unable to mount the drive then you may need a third party tool like Norton Utilities Disk Doctor to diagnose the disk & see if revovery is possible. Please see if someone you know has it.

[jjmac]

Harry Kuhman
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jjmac wrote:
>>>>>>
"mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/hda1,
>>>>>>

Underscore ... it just means it isn't a vfat fs.
>>>>

Actually, I saw a bad superblock message a week ago and asked about it also (no response). On my case it was an NTFS partition, but I have never received that message in the past opening NTFS partitions. The disk had become corrupted and Knoppix couldn't open it to read from it. XP was much worse, it just kept flashing something on the screen too fast to read and then rebooting the entire computer (cycle repeats). In my case it certainly didn't just mean it isn't a vfat.

I ended up having to use other tools to repair the partition, although Knoppix was a help in that it allowed me to at least back up my other partition on that computer.
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Yes, that sounds bad. I would think that the message isn't exclusive to attempting to use the "mount" command with the wrong fs associated with the "-t" switch.


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In my case it certainly didn't just mean it isn't a vfat.
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No, it would certainly seem so ...

But, the combined message is quite common to mount, when a mount is attemped when the wrong fs is given to the "-t" switch.

Though i doubt that the super block message would be exclusive to that case. An even more worrying if it was the only message.

If it is the correct fs though, then one can expect that something more sinister is going on.


By the tone of the original post it sounded like some partition corruption to me rather than the disk mechanics. No noises or other signs were reported. But then a bad disk will, at times, start with small errors which tend to grow. So it definitly needs to be kept in mind.

Especially strange sounds, like clicks or whines.


>>
Think about it. He has a hard drive with valuable data that either has a partially corrupted filesystem or the underlying physical disk itself is slowly dying. The absolute last thing to do to a dying hard drive is to write data to it & then expect to read that data off of it, which is really what you are suggesting. The important steps are to attempt to repair the filesystem and copy the data off.
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Yes ..... very much so. Writing to a suspected bad disk is not a good idea...

What do the logs have to say about it. Are there any "intr_dma" errors recorded in syslog or kern.log (interupt errors). Is the drive making sounds ????

I suppose a Win98 would be a "vfat" system, but i'm not sure there.

Would it be dangerous to use "dd" in this case.

I suppose any attemp to read/write could just be making things slowly worse, so your diagnostic tool suggestion is probably the better course.

One bad disk i had a while back (my own fault), as long as i was only doing short read/writes to it ... all was Ok. But on a longish cross copy using "tar" ... then it started to fail with "interrupt" errors "seek ready", "seek complete", "fail with exit code" etc, type of thing.


Harry Kuhman
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I ended up having to use other tools to repair the partition, although Knoppix was a help in that it allowed me to at least back up my other partition on that computer.
>>

What tools did you use, do you think they would be of help to the OP ?

Did you manage to trace the cause. ?


jm



jm

[Harry Kuhman]

What tools did you use, do you think they would be of help to the OP ?

Did you manage to trace the cause. ?

I'm not quite sure who "the OP" is. I ended up using several non-free comercial tools. I expect if Howitzer17 has them he will have used them by now. In my case the problem seems to hve been a spot in the beginning of the notebook drive that had gone "soft", not corrupted data, but data that was hard to read. The sector or sectors have now been recovered and rewritten and the system now seems fine. I have no reason to believe this is the same thing that has happened to Howitzer17.

[jjmac]

Yes, i was meaning Howitzer17 ...

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soft
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.... Howitzer17 hadn't mentioned anythin really, concerning associated things. As in your case, your screen started to do strnge things.

By associated things, aside from your own .. i was thinking of sounds, like clicks or whines... a lack of power can cause a drive to go strange as well ... so it is hard to say .

Your case does sound curious though. It would have been silent too, i would expect. With only the screen and reboots giving the hint that something serious was going on.

The progressive nature of drive fails is also worrysome. With just ordinary attempts to retrieve data.


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The sector or sectors have now been recovered and rewritten and the system now seems fine.
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so, you didn't lose the drive , good.


jm

[rwcitek]

@Underscore: Perhaps my last post wasnt clear. Correct this time and tell me if Iam wrong and how.

Your post was very clear, just inappropriate for this situation. The drive has a bad block, at best, or is just about to crash, at worst. Therefore, installing Knoppix to the HD is a Bad Idea(TM).

IMHO, the best approach would be to either to mount the drive and copy the data off, which is what Underscore recomended. Or use dd_rescue to image the drive (type 'dd_rescue --help' or use google for more info).

Regards,
- Robert
http://www.cwelug.org/