I have an external 250gb in a firewire case (maxtor hd) that i've been using for a while to store a bunch of video editing media and stuff... One day I rebooted the server and the drive didn't mount.

So I tried the following, mounting from the command line:

dozer:~# mount -t ext3 /dev/sdc1 /mnt/external250/Movies/
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sdc1,
missing codepage or other error
In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
dmesg | tail or so
dozer:~#

so then i checked dmesg, and found 15 or so errors like the following:
Current sdc: sense key Medium Error
Additional sense: Data phase error
end_request: I/O error, dev sdc, sector 75
scsi3: ERROR on channel 0, id 0, lun 0, CDB: Read (10) 00 00 00 00 4c 00 00 03 00
Current sdc: sense key Medium Error
Additional sense: Data phase error
end_request: I/O error, dev sdc, sector 76
scsi3: ERROR on channel 0, id 0, lun 0, CDB: Read (10) 00 00 00 00 4d 00 00 02 00
Current sdc: sense key Medium Error
Additional sense: Data phase error
end_request: I/O error, dev sdc, sector 77
scsi3: ERROR on channel 0, id 0, lun 0, CDB: Read (10) 00 00 00 00 4e 00 00 01 00
Current sdc: sense key Medium Error
Additional sense: Data phase error
end_request: I/O error, dev sdc, sector 78
EXT3-fs: can't read group descriptor 0

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so then i tried checking the partition with e2fsck

dozer:~# e2fsck -v /dev/sdc1
e2fsck 1.37 (21-Mar-2005)
e2fsck: Attempt to read block from filesystem resulted in short read while trying to open /dev/sdc1
Could this be a zero-length partition?
dozer:~#

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... so then i tried checking the partition table
dozer:~# fdisk /dev/sdc

Unable to read /dev/sdc
dozer:~#

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and now i'm out of ideas. I really need to recover the data on the drive, a lot of family videos and stuff that I'm in the process of editing.

I was thinking I could possibly get away with repartitioning it with the same partitions and start/end cylinders... but since I can't view the partition tables I don't want to risk that.

any hardware junkies have anything to offer?

You can change the partition table as many times you want. Your files will still be there. After you do that, I am not sure e2fsck can retrieve all the files with out any corruption. Before you use e2fsck, I suggest making a mirror copy of the drive (yes you will have two screw ups) and then run e2fsck on the backup drive. Keep the orginal from spying eyes, so you are not attempted to use it. Both drives have to be the same model and same brand to make a sector by sector copy with dd.

um... wanna tell me how the heck i'm supposed to make a copy of the drive when i can't fdisk/read/mount it or anything?

Sounds to me like the drive is failing or already failed. I would suggest you run Maxtor's PowerMax to see if it is still good or not.

I had this happen to me not too long ago. My files were lost and was unable to recover them.

By the way, I do not trust Maxtor anymore after having 3 drives fail on me in one year and have to repair/recover 2 more for a family member. Seagate is all I use now.

Just run cfdisk (front end to fdisk and sometimes more reliable) and hit enter to get past the error. Next make a new primary partition. You can try to use gpart to guess the partition table. Third use hdparm to re-scan the partition table. Finally you can run e2fsck. You should be running e2fsck on the backup hard drive instead of the orginal.

I said in my previous post to use dd to make a sector by sector copy of the drive to another drive. To do this and assuming the second drive is on /dev/sdd:

dd if=/dev/sdc of=/dev/sdd bs=512 conv=sync,noerrors

The command will take a long time, but it will make a mirror copy. It is best to this on a reliable PATA controller like the first controller on the motherboard.

I did the above a few years ago, but I was using XFS for the filesystem and a 120 GB Western Digital hard drive. The XFS utilites found every file, but they were all in lost+found.

e2fsck / fdisk / cfdisk: None of these will work if you can't even read from the drive!

At this point, there isn't really anything you can do, if you can't even talk to the drive. You may want to try some disk recovery tools, like SpinRite: http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm

There are also buisnesses that provide data recovery service, and are able to recover pretty much any data...however they tend to be expensive. Depends on how much your data is worth. Just google for 'data recovery' or something similar.

Hopefully you will learn from the school of hard knocks (I know I have), and start doing RAID + regular backups.

It's a long shot - but try popping it in the refrigerator overnight - it worked for me once!