Re: Disk drive recovery help
On Wed, 08 Apr 2009 07:38:26 -0700, tony mollica posted:
> Thorny wrote:
>> On Tue, 07 Apr 2009 15:29:16 -0700, tony mollica posted:
>>
>>> Hello.
>>>
>>> Need a little help with a disk drive.
>>>
>>> Until today, my external storage drive was working fine using Debian
>>> 4.0 (latest updates)
>>> and ext2 file system. It's a 180Gig drive divided into 3 partitions,
>>> 1 primary and 2 logical,
>>> sdg1, sdg5 and sdg6, for example.
>>>
>>> I did two things, after which the drive acts unusual. It powers up
>>> but takes a few minutes,
>>> then automounts only the third partition(sdg6). I can mount the
>>> second partition
>>> manually(sdg5), but the first, and only, primary partiton(sdg1) isn't
>>> found.
>>>
>>> cfdisk shows all partitions normally. I can e2fsck 5 and 6, but not
>>> 1. dmesg shows a read error in the sector that partition 1 begins.
>>> Can't access sdg1 at all, tried several different disk programs to
>>> access the partition.
>>>
>>> Back to the two things. I tried to change the disk label,
>>> unsuccessfully,
>>> and there
>>> was a call to check the partition, so I unmounted it and e2fsck'd it.
>>> Now I can only
>>> get to 2 of the 3 partitions. Everything seems to be there, but it
>>> won't recognize
>>> the first and only primary partition. All the sector numbers seem to
>>> match using
>>> gpart, lde, cfdisk and fdisk.
>>>
>>> Looking for suggestions to find the error in the first partition.
>>>
>>>
>> Just to clear up a misconception, you have to have a primary partition
>> to hold the logical partitions. So, make sure we are talking about
>> things correctly. With fdisk do you see both primaries with one being
>> shown as extended (and containing the logical partitions)?
>>
>> With the partition you are having trouble with unmounted, do you get an
>> error message when you try to fsck it?
>>
>>
> Yes, the necessary partitions are there. fdisk, cfdisk and testdisk all
> show
> the right stuff. Partition 1 is the problem, the other 2 I can mount
> normally.
> If I fsck part1 I get the message that no sdg1 exists (the drive is an
> external
> USB that used to have sdg1, sdg5 and sdg6). Testdisk even finds all the
> files. I thinking that there is some sort of hardware read error that's
> keeping
> the OS from recognizing the partition for mounting. I'm running some
> tests on the drive but I'll post that short error message from fsck
> shortly.
>
Tony, I think you missed my point. In order for there to be three usable
partitions on your system there has to be a physical partition to hold
logical partitions 5 and 6, you must have two primary partitions.
Post the output from fdisk -l.
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