ext3 corrupted

[John Van Ostrand]

On Sat, 2007-07-21 at 17:37 -0400, Marc Lijour wrote:

> I have a drive that got corrupted (just before it started to send SMART 
> alerts). I can't mount it and I get this error message:
> 
> EXT3-fs error (device sda12): ext3_check_descriptors: Block bitmap for group 
> 896 not in group (block 16777317)!
> 
> I can't mount it as ext2 either, and I can't mount sda either. auto as type 
> does not work either.
> 
> Running fsck and accepting all actions with a 'y' seems to have no effect. I 
> can't mount the disk and when I get to do fsck again I get the same actions.
> 
> dd works.
> 
> Do you know a way to get the data back?


First, let the drive cool down. Sometimes heat and the expansion of the
platters can cause read errors.

Next, get another drive and perform a dd from the dying drive to the
working drive. I would recommend booting from a rescue CD. Disc 1 from
any Red Hat/Fedora/CentOS will act as a rescue CD by typing "linux
rescue" at the boot prompt. Ubunutu's live boot would work as well and
give you some GUI tools too. Use the 'noerror' option when using dd so
that disk read errors will not abort the copy.

If the data is particularly sensitive you may want to make another copy
before continuing.

I can't comment on the tools to use to fix that file system, fsck has
generally worked for me. If you don't want to get your hands dirty there
are labs that will restore the data for you by working a little harder
to correct the file system errors.

Good luck.
-- 
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John Van Ostrand
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john-Da48MpWaEp0CzWx7n4ubxQ at public.gmane.org
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 ext.5102
Linux Solutions / IBM
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