-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hi Madison, First, if you have a spare hard drive, make a copy of the data on the bad disk (or better yet two) in case the hardware will die, and work on the copy. Then do: # /sbin/mke2fs -n /dev/hda5 -b [blocksize] Be sure to use the right block size here! You will see output including: Superblock backups stored on blocks: 8193, 24577, 40961, 57345, 73729 These are the locations of the superblocks. Pass these one by one to: e2fsck -b [backup superblock location] -y /dev/hda5 [read up on "man e2fsck"] If one of these superblocks are OK, e2fsck will start recovering all possible data (the -y switch means "yes to all"; otherwise you get thousands of prompts). All the possible files will be dumped into the /lost+found directory. - From there, you should be able to do something like: find /lost+found/* -name [some directory you are sure of the location of] i.e. find /long+found/* -name anton allowed me to find my home directory. the /lost+found directory basicly contains many hard links to the same files. You should be able to find your /home, /var, /etc, or whatever other directories you have on the drive and move them back to their respective spot. Be careful - many files may be corrupt without warning. Using this technique, I was able to recover an ext3 partition after deleting it, resizing the partition, reformatting as reiserfs, and using it for two days. About 70% of the files got recovered, but it obviously depends on the damage done. Madison Kelly wrote:

That would seem to be the case. However, I have used -many- of these Seagates and I have never seen one suddenly pooch before. I am debating running the Seagate test on it or decide to just recommend having it sent to a data recovery house...

I know that backups of the superblock are made, do you know by chance how to locate them and/or how to tell the OS to use one for mounting? Also, at least two partitions on the drive have gone bad...

Madison

- -- Anton Markov <("anton" + "@" + "truxtar" + "." + "com")> GnuPG Key fingerprint = 5546 A6E2 1FFB 9BB8 15C3 CE34 46B7 8D93 3AD1 44B4 "The difference between insanity and genius is measured only by success." - Some bad guy from 007 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQE/8ESERreNkzrRRLQRAhrqAJ99AdL8vA5Wcqgz/xUbiJIv9xKBtQCfWEc7 vur6ID9kQLMKqte0uPHFRZo= =/aCT -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- The Toronto Linux Users Group. Meetings: http://tlug.ss.org TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://tlug.ss.org/subscribe.shtml