Dear All,
It seems that the data is saved now. Thank you very much for
suggestions and advices!!
One thing i was confused was that i used 'LVM2' (default in RHEL5.x).
So before i do fsck, i have to do a couple of things for LVM
(i got them from googling...).
Afterwards, i can do 'fsck' and the disk is saved.
Well, i am rushing to back up files i need.
Thanks again!
-Jinho
On Mon, 2 Feb 2009, Edward M. Condon wrote:
I got 'Knoppix' and tried to mount it. But, i cannot do that.
I cannot do 'fsck' or 'dumpe2fs' to fix/see the HDs.
Seems to me that superblock is damaged and cannot be found now.
Any suggestion at this stage?
After you boot from the knoppix CD:
(1) Open a terminal window.
(2) "su" to root.
(3) In the terminal window as root, type:
fdisk -l
which should list disk and partition information (if available). If some
disk info is displayed, then this may be more indicative of a filesystem type
problem which is more recoverable in general.
If you do not see any disk info, this may indicate a hardware type problem
which can be more difficult to recover from. Hardware problems are often
accompanied by noises. This page has some sound samples you may be able to
compare to:
http://datacent.com/hard_drive_sounds.php
If the device seems accessible from an operating system, it would probably be
a good idea to try making an image file of the disk and trying any recovery
software tools on the disk image file instead of the disk itself. I've found
the "dd_rhelp" command (available on some live CD's such as Helix) to be
useful for making images of damaged disks. This is probably not the best
resource, but this page has some info on using "dd_rhelp":
http://www.ubuntugeek.com/recover-data-from-a-damaged-hard-disk-using-dd_rhelp.html
(If you use a live CD that includes it already, you probably don't need to
download and build it.)
If you can acquire some type of image file, then you can try running some
file repair/data recovery/forensic type tools on it to look for files. For
Windows type file-systems (FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, NTFS, NTFS5), I've had good
success with the commercial program "Restorer2000 Pro" (~$50 US, but worth it
simply for the time-saving factor and it will work with disk image files):
http://www.restorer2000.com/
For other type file-systems, you can try some of their native repair
utilities or forensic file-carving type programs:
http://www.forensicswiki.org/wiki/Tools:Data_Recovery
(There are some good freeware programs, but they may require some effort to
figure out how to use effectively.)
If it's a hardware related problem and you really need your data and can
afford it, a professional service is your best option. For some hardware
related information about hard drive data recovery, you can take a look at
some of Scott Moulton's presentations at:
http://www.myharddrivedied.com/presentations/
There may not be very much practical do-it-yourself type information for
handling hardware problems, but you can get an idea of how the recovery
process works.
-Ed
