Have been having problems with my hard disk. It finally stopped booting. i got another one, installed it and installed the old one, a Maxtor DiamondMax Plus8, as slave.

Ran >
[root@LaGrandota frazelle09]# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/hdb: 8455 MB, 8455200768 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1027 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdb1 * 8355 17985 77350270 83 Linux
/dev/hdb2 9630 21708 97014885+ 83 Linux
/dev/hdb3 8355 16710 67109888 0 Empty
Partition 3 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/hdb4 8355 16710 67109888 0 Empty
Partition 4 does not end on cylinder boundary.

Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 1275 10241406 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 1276 9730 67909306+ 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 1276 9730 67909275 83 Linux

The first disk is the injured one. It is obviously not detected correctly. It is only 40 GB in size (C/H/S = 4998, 255, 63). MCC (The "Control Panel from PCLinuxOS, Hardware tab, reports two disks, hda and hdb.) Hdb correctly reports two partitions as hdb1 and hdb2.

There is another tab in Control Panel called Run Config Tool. This runs something which looks like GParted and which would allow me to mess with the partitions. i say "mess" because at this point when i select hdb1 it has a tab to select Mount point. i chose /boot because it didn't offer "/" and when i did so, it listed a number of files which i remember being on this partition -- mainly the OS, /home is on the other, hdb2, partition.

First question: Should i "keep" Mount Point /boot, or use "/" or does it make any difference? i don't care about booting this thing again, just want to get my files from the second partition. i answered my own question... when i tried to select "/", it squacked and said that that Mount Point was already in use. So i used /boot and it offered to move all my files there.

Second question: The other tabs are: Resize, Format, Delete. If i choose Format, it asks for a file type. i was using reiserFS but it is not detected as such. It shous up as Ext2. If if i format this partition, will this wipe all the info?

Thanks for any help and have a great evening!

Hya,

If I understand correct,

First answer: I think, any penguin (on which you can run fdisk), / is already mounted. lilo (or something else) defines which partition (ie, /dev/hdc2, /dev/sda1...) is mounted as /.

Second answer: most probably data will go away.

These are answers.

Following are suggestions.

First suggestion: Make back-up onto physically different drive right away, so that you will not lose data.

Happy Penguins!

Thanks, Kaz! i'll keep working on it. Maybe i can run some filesystem check or rebuild or something like that. i saw somewhere that i might be able to rebuild the superblock, whatever that is.

Have a great evening!