Harry Kuhman
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jjmac wrote:
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"mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/hda1,
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Underscore ... it just means it isn't a vfat fs.
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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.


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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.
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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