Reply With QuoteOpen a command prompt and run the following command:
orCode:/sbin/fdisk /dev/hda
if it sees the SATA as SCSI.Code:/sbin/fdisk /dev/sda
On the fdisk prompt, hit the letter.Code:p
It should list the partition table. Does it show anything?
Booted up this morning, and computer died at kdm prompt. Rebooted. Comp asked me to insert system disk.
Uh-oh.
Booted up with Knoppix. Hard drives:
/dev/hda -- SATA ext3
/dev/hde -- IDE ext3 (and one FAT partition, too)
hdE works okay, it seems. Mounts and everything. hdA is comatose. The partition program that Knoppix has (QTPart, I believe it is called) sees the disk, but it cannot find any partitions.
So something screwed up my main harddrive. Major bummer.
Is there anyway I can reconstruct this drive so I can extract and backup my data? Thanks for your help.
Open a command prompt and run the following command:
orCode:/sbin/fdisk /dev/hda
if it sees the SATA as SCSI.Code:/sbin/fdisk /dev/sda
On the fdisk prompt, hit the letter.Code:p
It should list the partition table. Does it show anything?
Also, this software is supposed to help you recover partitions. However, I have never used it.
[quote author=trickster link=board=1;threadid=10591;start=0#msg95216 date=1122060683]
Open a command prompt and run the following command:
orCode:/sbin/fdisk /dev/hda
if it sees the SATA as SCSI.Code:/sbin/fdisk /dev/sda
On the fdisk prompt, hit the letter.Code:p
It should list the partition table. Does it show anything?
[/quote]
No.
As far as I can tell, the entire partition table is just gone. Which is really weird because it did boot up at first, as I stated above, and when I rebooted, it seemed to wipe the partition table then.root@ttyp0[knoppix]# /sbin/fdisk /dev/hda
Device contains neither a valid DOS partition table, nor Sun, SGI or OSF diskla bel
Building a new DOS disklabel. Changes will remain in memory only,
until you decide to write them. After that, of course, the previous
content won't be recoverable.
The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 24321.
There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024,
and could in certain setups cause problems with:
1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO)
2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs
(e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)
Warning: invalid flag 0x0000 of partition table 4 will be corrected by w(rite)
Command (m for help): p
Disk /dev/hda: 200.0 GB, 200049647616 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 24321 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
Command (m for help):
[quote author=trickster link=board=1;threadid=10591;start=0#msg95217 date=1122060822]
Also, this software is supposed to help you recover partitions. However, I have never used it.
[/quote]
Thanks for the link; I'm checking it out right now.
Okay, using the testdisk (v4.2) utility that comes with Knoppix, I have analyzed the /dev/hda drive.
I don't know what this means.TestDisk 4.2, Data Recovery Utility, August 3 2002
Christophe GRENIER <grenier@cgsecurity.org>
http://www.cgsecurity.org
Disk /dev/hda - CHS 24321 255 63 - 190779 MB
Check current partition structure
get_MBR_data:
Partition sector doesn't have the endmark 0xAA55
Run "MBR code" in TestDisk to correct it
I press [tt]enter[/tt]. I get the following screen:
I have no idea about those numbers, but it looks like the partitions are there. It may just be the partition table is corrupted for whatever reason, but it may be able to reconstruct the table.TestDisk 4.2, Data Recovery Utility, August 3 2002
Christophe GRENIER <grenier@cgsecurity.org>
http://www.cgsecurity.org
Disk /dev/hda - CHS 24321 255 63 - 190779 MB
Use arrow keys to change partition characteristics (see below)
Press the ENTER key to continue
Partition Start End Size
* FAT32 0 1 1 670 254 63 10779552
L Linux ext2fs 671 1 1 1434 254 63 12273597
L Linux Swap 1435 1 1 1497 254 63 1012032
L Linux ext2fs 1498 1 1 24320 254 63 366651432
And maybe one of these days I'll learn my lesson about backing my fraging data up more than just once a month(Well, actually, I do back up my data frequently -- to my school account. But, believe it or not, my school account expired today! At 6:00 AM PDT, so I moved all that data to my local drive just yesterday. Can you believe that?)
But spirits are high. I'm going to have to read the utility's docs before I proceed lest I accidentally overwrite the data.
Good luck! Let us know how it works!!
I tried to run the [tt]MBR Code[/tt] functionality, but that didn't work, and it only screwed things up more, though I think it's still fixable.
I ran the analyze functionality, and wrote the changes to disk:
I'm going to reboot again and see if this worked.Disk /dev/hda - CHS 24321 255 63 - 190779 MB
Check current partition structure
Partition Start End Size
1 * FAT32 0 1 1 670 254 63 10779552
2 E extended LBA 671 0 1 24320 254 63 379937250
5 L Linux ext2fs 671 1 1 1434 254 63 12273597
X extended 1435 0 1 1497 254 63 1012095
6 L Linux Swap 1435 1 1 1497 254 63 1012032
X extended 1498 0 1 24320 254 63 366651495
7 L Linux ext2fs 1498 1 1 24320 254 63 366651432
Well, guess who's posting from his very own Linux installation once again? You guessed it.
That testdisk program worked like a charm. It rewrote the MBR (I guess) so I could mount the drives in Knoppix and back up the data (just in case). Then I reinstalled LILO and here I am again.
On a semi-related note:
I haven't been real impressed with EXT3. It has no undelete capability. It doesn't fail well when the power goes out (which happens frequently in my 3rd world country). It takes forever to run a fsck.
How's reiserfs? Is it any better? Maybe I'll reformat with that fs instead.
Glad to hear you got it to work.
I have had 2 bad experiences with ReiserFS. Both times, I lost a LOt of data because a friend kept pressing the power button to turn off my headless server. Never had a chance to recover the data.
Haven't had any issues with Ext3 yet.
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