Greetings!

I have a Linux Workstation running Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES (2.4.21-37.ELsmp). The system was working perfectly before until I moved it to a new place!!! Prior to the move, I had shut it down and it did so normally; I then moved it to a new location (I believe I took care not to be jerky while moving) and then plugged it in -- I initially got a "Fsck: Unexpected Inconsistency" error. I went through the recommended fsck routine and now I get the following error:

fsck.ext3: Attempt to read blcok from filesystem resulted in short read Could this bea zero-length partition?
while trying to open /dev/vg01/lv_data

[FAILED]...


I opened up the box to make sure the IDE cables to the HDDs are proper and then I rebooted the m/c. After checking a number of posts and doing various checks, these are what I found:

1. dmesg | less

...
...
hda: ST380011A, ATA DISK drive
hdb: Maxtor 6E040L0, ATA DISK drive
...
...
hda: 156250000 sectors (80000 MB) w/ 2048KiB Cache
CHS-9726/255/63, UDMA(100)
hdb: attached ide-disk driver.
hdb: host protected area => 1
hdb: 80293248 sectors (41110 MB) w/2048KiB Cache
CHS=4998/255/63, UDMA(100)
Partition check:
hda: hda1 hda2 hda3
hdb: unknown partition table
...
...
hdb: dma_intr: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
hdb: dma_intr: error=0x40 { UncorrectableError }, LBAsect=33160,
sector=33160
end_request: I/O error, dev 03:40 (hdb), sector 33160
hdb: dma_intr: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
hdb: dma_intr: error=0x40 { UncorrectableError }, LBAsect=33162
sector=33162
end_request: I/O error, dev 03:40 (hdb), sector 33162

Is there a way to recover my lost data? Any help is greatly appreciated.

Rajesh

This doesn't look promising. Try a different IDE cable, if that doesn't work, comment out the mount points for that drive in your fstab, and try to mount it manually in single user mode. Get the data off, that you can, and run the manufacturer tests on the drive. This looks like a bad hard drive to me... Sorry, good luck with the recovery.

Mike.

P.S.
A thought just occured to me, if you can't mount the drive normally, try disabling DMA on the drive after reboot:
And then try to mount the drive and get your data (I have no reasoning for this really, but it might help).

Thank you very much, Mike, for your reply and for your time.

I commented out the mount points for /dev/vg01/lv_data (which is a logical volume on /dev/hdb) in fstab; Now, I could boot the m/c up -- ofcouse I cannot access my data since it is on /dev/hdb. I ran some further diagnostics -- I append the output below. Any light that you could shed on the matter is greatly appreciated -- Thanks!

Rajesh
=================

fdisk -l
---------

Disk /dev/hda: 80.0 GB, ....
...
...
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 13 104391 83 Linux
/dev/hda2 14 9472 75979417+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda3 9473 9726 2040255 82 Linux swap

Disk /dev/hdb: 41.1 GB, 41110142976 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4998 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Disk /dev/hdb doesn't contain a valid partition table

lvscan
------

lvscan -- ACTIVE "/dev/vg01/lv_data" [38.27 GB]
lvscan -- 1 logical volumes with 38.27 GB total in 1 volume group
lvscan -- 1 active logical volumes

pvscan
------

pvscan -- reading all physical volumes ( this may take a while...)
pvscan -- ACTIVE PV "/dev/hdb" of VG "vg01" [38.27 GB / 0 free ]
pvscan -- total: 1 [38.29 GB] / in use: 1 [38.29 GB] / in no VG: 0 [0]

lvmdiskscan
-----------

lvmdiskscan -- reading all disks / partitions
lvmdiskscan -- /dev/hda1 [ 101.94 MB ] free whole disk
lvmdiskscan -- /dev/hdb [ 38.29 GB] USED LVM whole disk
lvmdiskscan -- 2 disks
lvmdiskscan -- 2 whole disks
lvmdiskscan -- 0 loop devices
lvmdiskscan -- 0 multiple devices
lvmdiskscan -- 0 network block devices
lvmdiskscan -- 3 partitions
lvmdiskscan -- 0 LVM physical volume partitions


vgscan
------

vgscan -- reading all physical volumes
vgscan -- found active volume group "vg01"
vgscan -- "/etc/lvmtab" and "/etc/lvmtab.d" successfully created
vgscan -- WARNING: This program doesnot do a VGDA backup of your volume group

It looks like your Partition table is screwed up, I've never tried to recover one though. Search the forum for partition table recovery, and also google for that, and see what you come up with. If you find some stuff post your results here so others can benefit. Maybe somebody else will respond to your thread who has successfully done this... Wish I could help more, Good Luck!

Mike.

What kind of data is on hdb?
mpg, avi, jpgs?

Most of the data files are text files (input to programs). There are also program files (source code + binaries).

Thanks,
Rajesh

I agree; partition table problem. Study the docs that are available all over the net about partition recovery.

Get Spinrite

Try "gpart" or "testdisk" from a Knoppix LIVE CD.
If this doesn't work try this:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...d.php?t=428962

Good Luck!!!

Thanks so much for all the replies.

I downloaded and tried gpart.linux.

./gpart.linux /dev/hdb

Begin scan...

* Warning: short read near sector(33012), 43520 bytes instead of 66048. Skipping...

* Warning: read error (EIO) near sector(33097), skipping...

* Warning: short read near sector (47524), 64000 bytes instead of 66048. Skipping...
...
...
...
...
...
* Warning: short read near sector(71860476), 43520 bytes instead of 66048. Skipping...

* Warning: read error (EIO) near sector(71860561), skipping...
End scan.

Checking partitions...
ok.

Guessed primary partition table:
Primary partition(1)
type: 000(0x00)(unused)
size: 0mb #s(0) s(0-0)
chs: (0/0/0)-(0/0/0)d (0/0/0)-(0/0/0)r

Primary partition(2)
type: 000(0x00)(unused)
size: 0mb #s(0) s(0-0)
chs: (0/0/0)-(0/0/0)d (0/0/0)-(0/0/0)r

Primary partition(3)
type: 000(0x00)(unused)
size: 0mb #s(0) s(0-0)
chs: (0/0/0)-(0/0/0)d (0/0/0)-(0/0/0)r

Primary partition(4)
type: 000(0x00)(unused)
size: 0mb #s(0) s(0-0)
chs: (0/0/0)-(0/0/0)d (0/0/0)-(0/0/0)r

I am unable to decipher what this means. Should I read the above as "Kindly reformat"?

I am downloading Knoppix now and plan to test testdisk next...

Thanks once again for your help and your time,

Much appreciated,
Rajesh

Have a look at this:

http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/LVM-HOWTO/

Chapter A 1

Good Luck!!!