[Solved]FSCKED - How to rescue a Hard Drive, ...no not the data..the Drive.

[tantaliz3]

I have a relatively new HD in my laptop here and...it's been giving me fs errors a lot recently. It's my fault...I had to reset during a couple 100% cpu lockups. After resintalling 7.04 a few times and running full upgrades to 7.10 3 times...fsck is now giving me short read errors when I start it from a live CD. It's asking me if maybe the 90g partition is zero length. The only other partition is a 1g swap. Thankfully this live cd still gets me connected. I've googled fsck and short read errors, but I haven't found anything that sounds like this. Have I missed anything? How would I describe a problem like this better to maybe get a better result?

Thanks.

[Snowhog]

Re: FSCKED - How to rescue a Hard Drive, ...no not the data..the Drive.

Most likely, as you've reinstalled several times, can I safely assume that you don't have anything you really want saved? Given that you have several hard lockups, it is "possible" that areas on the drive surface have become damaged. fsck checks the integrity of file systems, not drive surfaces. If I were in your position, I'd be thinking about reformatting the HD (GParted LiveCD will do the job very nicely) and then reinstalling.

[tantaliz3]

Re: FSCKED - How to rescue a Hard Drive, ...no not the data..the Drive.

Okay, I'll try to get a LiveCd. What do you think about the QTParted utility? It's on this livecd, but when I load it and try to create a new partition table, it says It can't be done. It also says that there is only a single partition on the drive.

lol, yea. After the second reinstall I got smart and started backing up a few things to my thumb. At this point, I'll be eternally grateful to have a stable system again. Ps. I'm still noobish. Thanks for your help.

[Snowhog]

Re: FSCKED - How to rescue a Hard Drive, ...no not the data..the Drive.

GParted is the partitioner of choice by most (here). You can download and burn the LiveCD from here. This is version 0.3.4-10 (version 11 has problems).

[tantaliz3]

Re: FSCKED - How to rescue a Hard Drive, ...no not the data..the Drive.

Thanks for your help. I'll try the livecd and let you know what happens.

[Qqmike]

Re: FSCKED - How to rescue a Hard Drive, ...no not the data..the Drive.

Low-level drive format (=> write zeros to the entire drive). Seagate SeaTools CD has such a utility or read my How-To on the dd Command (under Documentation/How-To's). Repartitioning/reformatting your HD does not address HD issues such as bad sectors (in fact, it doesn't do much of anything). Run disk diagnostics (SeaTools, run Smart--there is a free Linux SMART utility, somewhere, too). => zero-out the drive; GParted to re-partition;

[dibl]

Re: FSCKED - How to rescue a Hard Drive, ...no not the data..the Drive.

there is a free Linux SMART utility, somewhere, too

"smartmontools" is in the standard repositories. I installed it the other day and used it to run self-diagnostics on a hard drive. I'm not expert with it, by any means, but it appears to have lots of capabilities -- I noticed some of the command options were clearly labeled "DANGEROUS" -- that's always an indicator that a command actually does something useful!

[tantaliz3]

Re: FSCKED - How to rescue a Hard Drive, ...no not the data..the Drive.

Thanks for your posts guys.

I haven't had a chance to try GParted yet either. I have only this box atm, and I'm using the drive for the K7.04 livecd. Qqmike, where is your tutorial located? Will dd let me reformat from within this live cd? If so...how to I release the swap partition that the livecd is using? umount doesn't seem to work as I understand it.

[Qqmike]

Re: FSCKED - How to rescue a Hard Drive, ...no not the data..the Drive.

dd Command
http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...opic=3090824.0

I ran that to zero-out a 160 GB Seagate SATA (from the Helix live CD using the DoD version of dd), then separately I booted from the GParted Live CD to do the partitioning/formatting.

-- Now, I have not tried it (or forgot, if I did), but GParted Live CD does have a command line (I've used that) and MAY also have dd available.

-- Knoppix has dd and has gparted (I'm pretty sure...?), so that's another way.
(It has QtParted, but don't use that – use the gparted).

Fact is, you could use the Kubuntu Live CD, run dd from there, then run GParted from there. You MAY have to install GParted in the live CD session (using K > Adept Manager > search gparted, Request Install, Apply, and then gparted would show up in K > System > Partition Editor; and then it would only exist in RAM (ramdisk) and be gone after your live session ends).

Or, use SeaTools to do “low-level” format (which for Seagate means zero-fill or zero-out); then use GParted Live CD for partitioning.

Lots of ways to get this work done.

Nice to have a live persistent Kubuntu flash drive on hand, just in case you might be without your main hard drive for awhile.
Build a LIVE Kubuntu Flash Drive, How-To
http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...089474.new#new
Step-by-step
-- with Persistence -- using GRUB all the way (i.e., no Syslinux): Reply #7

Or, at the very least to have a live Kubuntu CD to use; copy your bookmarks and email addresses to a flash drive to be loaded into your live Kubuntu CD session as needed.

[tantaliz3]

Re: FSCKED - How to rescue a Hard Drive, ...no not the data..the Drive.

That worked great.

I installed GParted and ran dd. I am getting IO errors from the first half of the drive, but I managed to salvage about 50%. Thanks for your help guys.

Now I have another problem with kdeinit in the 7.10 upgrade. After login I'm having connection errors. I'll post my .xsession-errors here.

Xsession: X session started for tantaliz3 at Tue Feb 26 23:13:52 MST 2008
startkde: Starting up...
startkde: kpersonalizer not found! Please install to properly configure your user.
X Error: BadDevice, invalid or uninitialized input device 156
Major opcode: 145
Minor opcode: 3
Resource id: 0x0
Failed to open device
X Error: BadDevice, invalid or uninitialized input device 156
Major opcode: 145
Minor opcode: 3
Resource id: 0x0
Failed to open device
kdecore (KLocale): WARNING: Definition of PluralForm is none of NoPlural/TwoForms/French/OneTwoRest/Russian/Polish/Slovenian/Lithuanian/Czech/Slovak/Arabic/Balcan/Macedonian/Gaeilge/Maltese: Definition of PluralForm - to be set by the translator of kdelibs.po
kdeinit: Communication error with launcher. Exiting!
Warning: connect() failed: : Connection refused
X Error: BadDevice, invalid or uninitialized input device 156
Major opcode: 145
Minor opcode: 3
Resource id: 0x0
Failed to open device
X Error: BadDevice, invalid or uninitialized input device 156
Major opcode: 145
Minor opcode: 3
Resource id: 0x0
Failed to open device
kdecore (KLocale): WARNING: Definition of PluralForm is none of NoPlural/TwoForms/French/OneTwoRest/Russian/Polish/Slovenian/Lithuanian/Czech/Slovak/Arabic/Balcan/Macedonian/Gaeilge/Maltese: Definition of PluralForm - to be set by the translator of kdelibs.po
startkde: Shutting down...
Warning: connect() failed: : Connection refused
Error: Can't contact kdeinit!
ICE default IO error handler doing an exit(), pid = 5614, errno = 0
startkde: Running shutdown scripts...
startkde: Done.

Hmm...sofar this is all the feedback I have found on my system. I don't understand yet. Is there anywhere else I should look?

[tantaliz3]

Re: FSCKED - How to rescue a Hard Drive, ...no not the data..the Drive.

I found this post:

http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...opic=3090913.0

This looks to be the same problem I'm having.

I'm not sure I understand his instructions though. Is LANG an env variable? Do I set it from bash?

[dibl]

Re: FSCKED - How to rescue a Hard Drive, ...no not the data..the Drive.

Looks like some combination of "wacom" non-errors plus language pack errors.

Try (in a Konsole window)

sudo apt-get remove language-pack-en

Then you'll need to restart the X server with Ctrl-Alt-Backspace.

[tantaliz3]

Re: FSCKED - How to rescue a Hard Drive, ...no not the data..the Drive.

Wacom. Hmm..my xorg.conf is full of wacom device definitions. I wonder what would happen if I removed them...

I'll try that right away. Thanks!

[monte48lowes]

Re: FSCKED - How to rescue a Hard Drive, ...no not the data..the Drive.

The wacom information can be removed. Ensure that all of the wacom information is removed though, to prevent further errors.

Mike

[tantaliz3]

Re: FSCKED - How to rescue a Hard Drive, ...no not the data..the Drive.

Thanks Monte. I'll be sure to backup before I do. Any idea why they were included in the default conf?

Oh, dibl, removing the language pack worked Great! Solved it in 10 seconds Flat.

Thanks for all your help guys.