Apologies for the confusion… I’m on the ragged edge of having a clue about what I’m doing… :?
Thanks robin_listas for calling me out on these discrepancies:
Sure it was “/dev/sdb”?
well… no actually it was /dev/sdb1…
Notice the difference. It is trying to mount “/dev/sdd1”, which means it is the first partition of the disk. But the fsck you run above was done
on the raw device, no partitions.
How come?
I do notice now… the difference is that in this case I had attached the drive via USB after having created a 13.1 system to work with.
So it was then id’d as /dev/sdd1 in that system when I tried to access it.
The fsck I mentioned was done on the original system setup so the drive was installed as /dev/sdb.
So now that I’ve had the entire day to try and gather some hopefully more accurate info this time 
…and certainly more detailed…
I’ve reset the system drives to the original configuration. 12.2 system drive and the errant 1Tb /home drive in the racks.
Booted up again and back into emergency mode as before. Here are the results and lordie it was painful.
Not knowing how else to get it, I’ve manually typed every line here since I can’t seem to get it out of a log file somehow…
Popeye:~ # fdisk -l
Disk / dev/sda: 10.3 Gb, 10254827520 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1246 cylinders, total 20028960 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 byes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000775cc
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 2048 17911807 8954880 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 17911808 20027391 1057792 82 Linux swap / Solaris
Disk / dev/sdb: 1000.2 Gb, 1000204886016
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders, total 1953525168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 byes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000e6935
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 2048 1953523711 976760832 83 Linux
So then I ran fsck manually. robin_listas got me thinking so I did it twice…
.
Popeye:~ # fsck /dev/sdb
fsck from util-linux 2.21.2
e2fsck 1.42.4 (12June-2012)
ext2fs_open2: Bad magic number in super-block
fsck.ext2: Superblock invalid, trying backup blocks...
fsck.ext2: Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/sdb
The superblock could not be read or does not describe a correct ext2 filesystem.
If the device is valid and it really contains an ext2 filesystem (and not swap or ufs or something else), then the superblock is corrupt, and you might try running e2fsck with an alternate superblock:
e2fsck -b 8193 <device>
Unfortunately I’m not sure what most of that means. Then I re-ran fsck on /dev/sdb1 like I’d actually done before.
I was going to try and somehow copy out the loads of info it throws, but my web search tells me that there is no log created for fsck errors and that the output is sent only to the screen. I’m sure that makes sense to someone with a lot of knowledge of the system but to me it sounds totally stupid.
Am I missing the obvious some how? But anyway…I give the hundreds of lines of text from my screen as best I can.
There are lots of groups of text that seem to repeat.
I can only scroll up so far on screen but they appear to be “sets” of data that are identical other than that first set of numbers (9xxx.xxxxxx)
That number increments on each line and I suppose is just a sequential “event” number or whatever. Here is one set of the repeating data…
[9404.503775] ata6.00 exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x0
[9404.505391] ata6.00: BMDMA stat 0x24
[9404.506992] ata6.00 failed command: READ DMA
[9404.508578] ata6.00: cmd c8/00:08:68:09:00/00:00:00:00:00/e0 tag0 dma 131072 in
[9404.508579] res 51/40:00:68:09:00/00:00:00:00:00/00 Emask 0x9 (media error)
[9404.511810] ata6.00: status: { DRDY ERR }
[9404.513417] ata6.00: error: {UNC}
That identical set repeats many, many times scrolling down the screen over and over and then these lines…
[9404.648463] end_request: I/O error, dev sdb, sector 2408
[9404.640074] Buffer I/O error on device sdb1, logical block 45
[9404.651698] Buffer I/O error on device sdb1, logical block 46
[9404.653281] Buffer I/O error on device sdb1, logical block 47
[9404.654857] Buffer I/O error on device sdb1, logical block 48
[9404.656408] Buffer I/O error on device sdb1, logical block 49
[9404.657940] Buffer I/O error on device sdb1, logical block 50
[9404.659641] Buffer I/O error on device sdb1, logical block 51
[9404.660957] Buffer I/O error on device sdb1, logical block 52
[9404.662434] Buffer I/O error on device sdb1, logical block 53
and then immediately afterward, the sets noted above begin with a slight alteration (note the highlighted red number):
[9xxx.xxxxxx] ata6.00: BMDMA stat 0x24
[9xxx.xxxxxx] ata6.00 failed command: READ DMA
[9xxx.xxxxxx] ata6.00: cmd c8/00:08:68:09:00/00:00:00:00:00/e0 tag0 dma **4096** in
[9xxx.xxxxxx] res 51/40:00:68:09:00/00:00:00:00:00/00 Emask 0x9 (media error)
[9xxx.xxxxxx] ata6.00: status: { DRDY ERR }
[9xxx.xxxxxx] ata6.00: error: {UNC}
That set repeats exactly 6 times, then:
[9xxx.xxxxxx] end_request: I/O error, dev sdb, sector 2408
[9xxx.xxxxxx] Buffer I/O error on device sdb1, logical block 45
fsck.ext4: Attempt to read block from filesystem resulted in short read while trying to open /dev/sdb1
Could this be a zero-length partition?
Popeye:~ #
And I’m back to the cmd prompt with no opportunity to answer the question.
I seriously need to kick my own butt for not having backed up my password file, calendars, documents, check registers, etc for a year.
I’m so aggrivated with my stupidity that I can’t begin to tell you.
So pray tell… is there any hope here and if so, what tools do I need to recover data from this drive?
Thanks all!