Hi, arne wrote: > and I doubt if I understand what is a 'sparse' superblock
It's not a bad sign, as it seems: http://www.nongnu.org/ext2-doc/ext2.html#SUPERBLOCK "The first version of ext2 (revision 0) stores a copy at the start of every block group, along with backups of the group descriptor block(s). Because this can consume a considerable amount of space for large filesystems, later revisions can optionally reduce the number of backup copies by only putting backups in specific groups (this is the sparse superblock feature)." > Command line: TestDisk /log /dev/sdb > ... > 1 P partition_map 1 63 63 Looks like it recognized a GUID partition table (GPT). > 3 P HFS 262208 1953525151 1953262944 This would be the ext filesystem's partition. The following superuser command establishes a read-only loop device which begins at the given block: losetup -o $(expr 262208 '*' 512) -r -f /dev/sdb (Contrary to the man page, losetup -f does not tell me the used device path. I have to run losetup -l | fgrep /dev/sdb to learn that it's /dev/loop0.) > Linux 262208 1953525151 1953262944 > ext2 blocksize=4096 Large file Sparse superblock, 1000 GB / 931 GiB > recover_EXT2: "e2fsck -b 32768 -B 4096 device" may be needed This is probably the normal superblock in that partition. But running e2fsck might cause the end of the remaining data in the filesystem. I'd try to mount the loop device and hope to recover some files. When this is queezed out, then maybe a run of e2fsck might recover more valid files ... or ruin the filesystem. Have a nice day :) Thomas