OK, I am new to Linux & took a bit of a punt on choosing to install Zorin as opposed to other Linux OS like Mint Mate etc.

I was really pleased for the first couple of days - great GUI, fast & responsive (I only have a celeron). But this morning the computer (Zorin 8) wouldn't boot- it gives this message almost immediately after turning on the computer-

error:failure reading sector 0 x 8 a 8 from 'hd 0'. Entering rescue mode. grub rescue>

The night before I created & saved a couple of Libre Word Processor documents & saved them to the internal hard drive- I obviously now can't access them - which is incredibly annoying.

What does this error mean?- does it suggest there is a problem with the Internal Hard Drive? (I do suspect there is a problem with the HD) And how do I go about at least recovering those 2 Libre documents &/or getting the computer back working?

I'm pretty naive on grub!

Many thanks for any help,
Paul

If you still have the Live CD (or other medium) you used to install Zorin, you can boot it up, mount the partition on which you had Zorin to access the files you are looking for and then copy them to some other medium like a flash drive. If you are unfamiliar with these terms, I would suggest that you boot the Mint medium and open a terminal, then run this command: sudo fdisk -l(Lower Case Letter L in the command) and post the output here. Someone should then be able to give more specific instructions. You might find something sooner by doing an online search.

root@sysresccd /root % sudo fdisk -l
zsh: correct 'sudo' to '_sudo' [nyae]? y
_arguments:comparguments:312: can only be called from completion function
root@sysresccd /root %


so I them tried fsarchiver (see below) - me trying to interpret it below - shows sda which is an external Seagate 1tb HD, the sr0 is the SystemRescueCD - so in both of these commands, (as far as I can interpret - the Internal Hard Drive (where teh Zorin OS is installed & the Libre documents I saved- isn't recognised. I also tried gparted - but once again it gives a 'no partition' status



root@sysresccd /root % fsarchiver probe simple
[======DISK======] [=============NAME==============] [====SIZE====] [MAJ] [MIN]
[sda ] [Desktop ] [ 931.51 GB] [ 8] [ 0]
[sr0 ] [DVD-RW DVR-216 ] [ 455.41 MB] [ 11] [ 0]

[=====DEVICE=====] [==FILESYS==] [======LABEL======] [====SIZE====] [MAJ] [MIN]
[loop0 ] [squashfs ] [<unknown> ] [ 341.51 MB] [ 7] [ 0]
[sda1 ] [<unknown> ] [<unknown> ] [ 931.50 GB] [ 8] [ 1]
root@sysresccd /root %

does this all mean I have a damaged internal hard drive?

Might be. The command I suggested would have worked using Zorin or Mint CDs as they use sudo and I don't believe SystemRescueCD does. Instead, using the SystemRescueCD, you could try in the terminal typing: su -, then hit the Enter key and type: fdisk -l, hit Enter and see if you get output on your drive. The link below explains how you could run a filesystem check which may help.

http://www.thegeekstuff.com/2012/08/...mand-examples/

ok - I tried it (sudo fdisk -l) in Mint using the live CD-

mint@mint ~ $ sudo fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sdb: 16.8 GB, 16777216000 bytes
64 heads, 32 sectors/track, 16000 cylinders, total 32768000 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x6f20736b

This doesn't look like a partition table
Probably you selected the wrong device.

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 ? 778135908 1919645538 570754815+ 72 Unknown
/dev/sdb2 ? 168689522 2104717761 968014120 65 Novell Netware 386
/dev/sdb3 ? 1869881465 3805909656 968014096 79 Unknown
/dev/sdb4 ? 2885681152 2885736650 27749+ d Unknown

Partition table entries are not in disk order

Disk /dev/sdd: 31.7 GB, 31674335232 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 3850 cylinders, total 61863936 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdd1 8192 61863935 30927872 c W95 FAT32 (LBA)

The fdisk output shows 16GB and 32GB drives. Flash drives? Since the drive in question is a 1TB drive, then you may indeed have a failing hard drive. sdb output also shows unknown filesystem type.

16GB and 32GB drives are flash drives - yes. The drive in question is actually 500gb (the 1TB drive is an external HD). What is weird I have just tried the fdisk command again -

mint@mint ~ $ sudo fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders, total 976773168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00005b6d

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 2048 972597247 486297600 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 972599294 976771071 2085889 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 972599296 976771071 2085888 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Disk /dev/sdb: 16.8 GB, 16777216000 bytes
64 heads, 32 sectors/track, 16000 cylinders, total 32768000 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x6f20736b

This doesn't look like a partition table
Probably you selected the wrong device.

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 ? 778135908 1919645538 570754815+ 72 Unknown
/dev/sdb2 ? 168689522 2104717761 968014120 65 Novell Netware 386
/dev/sdb3 ? 1869881465 3805909656 968014096 79 Unknown
/dev/sdb4 ? 2885681152 2885736650 27749+ d Unknown

Partition table entries are not in disk order
-----
So this is now showing sda as a 500gb - so it now recognises it (the internal HD???)

given that it now appears to recognise the internal 500gb hard drive (beats me why now) so I went to the HD through the 'Computer' folder - when I double clicked on the HD's icon - I this pop-up error message

Unable to mount drive-Error mounting /dev/sda1 at /media/mint/bcf2eaf3-bc30-4b56-8600-ca68c77b15af: Command-line `mount -t "ext4" -o "uhelper=udisks2,nodev,nosuid" "/dev/sda1" "/media/mint/bcf2eaf3-bc30-4b56-8600-ca68c77b15af"' exited with non-zero exit status 32: mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sda1,
missing codepage or helper program, or other error
In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
dmesg | tail or so


so I tried $ dmesg | tail & got-
mint@mint ~ $ dmesg | tail
[ 2418.180102] ata3.00: revalidation failed (errno=-2)
[ 2418.180108] ata3.00: disabled
[ 2418.180131] ata3: EH complete
[ 2418.180169] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Unhandled error code
[ 2418.180174] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda]
[ 2418.180176] Result: hostbyte=DID_BAD_TARGET driverbyte=DRIVER_OK
[ 2418.180179] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] CDB:
[ 2418.180182] Read(10): 28 00 00 00 08 88 00 00 08 00
[ 2418.180194] end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 2184
[ 2418.180216] EXT4-fs (sda1): can't read group descriptor 16

You could try running a filesystem check on /dev/sda1. See the link below for more info on how:

http://www.thegeekstuff.com/2012/08/...mand-examples/

Run the command below to check the filesystem type for sda1: parted /dev/sda print all [/CODE]

Might be a bad drive.