Mounting Drive Bad Superblock Error

wraith_86 · June 16, 2010, 7:21am

Hi guys, hopefully someone can help me here. I have a x64 OpenSUSE server with two hard drivers installed. The first one is used for the / and /home partitions and the other is for backups. Ironically enough it is the backup hard drive I am having trouble with.
I was having trouble writting to the drive and unmounted it to preform a fchsk, however now when ever I try to mount it I get the following error:

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

Does anyone know who I can repair the drive and retrive data? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

DenverD · June 16, 2010, 8:51am

wraith 86 wrote:
> dmesg | tail or so
>
> Does anyone know who I can repair the drive and retrive data? Any help
> would be greatly appreciated.

from your description (trouble writing to the drive) it might not be
possible to recover the drive…unfortunately many drives today do not
make it to the end of their warranty period prior to failing–it seems
the manufacturers have greatly dumbed down their standards to maximize
profits (compared to the drives of the '90s)…

how old is the drive?
brand/model?
ATA/IDE/SCSI/SATA??
have you run it 24x7, or?
what is the warranty on the drive?
has it been subject to overheating? [is this a rack server]
server make/model?
what is the file system in use on the drive?

have you tried unplugging the cable from both the motherboard and
drive (while the system is shut down, of course) then reattaching and
powering up again? [it takes just a TINY amount of corrosion to wipe
out an otherwise good connection!]

have you tried replacing the cable with a known good one…[an old
friend’s Rule One: Always suspect the cabling first!]

have you tried removing the drive and putting it in a different
machine to see if it works ok there? [if it does then it has to be the
server’s cable OR motherboard OR drive interface]

had you done anything just before the first problem writing to the
drive which may have upset the works? (edited fstab maybe?)

DenverD · June 16, 2010, 9:01am

DenverD wrote:
> had you done anything just before the first problem writing to the
> drive which may have upset the works? (edited fstab maybe?)

OH!, and i forgot to mention: what was the output from


dmesg | tail

immediately following a manual mount attempt?
and, while at it, do all of these, in order


cat /etc/fstab
cat /etc/mtab
<insert your mount command here and let us see the error, then>
dmesg | tail

then copy paste the output back to here (inside “code tags” which you
can get by clicking on the # in the message editor)

gropiuskalle · June 16, 2010, 9:20am

I was having trouble writting to the drive and unmounted it to preform a fchsk …]

I suppose you mean ‘fsck’. Did fsck change / repair / report anything on that drive? What if you repeat a fsck now?

gogalthorp · June 16, 2010, 6:21pm

Sounds like hardware going bad. Run a scan with software from the maker to find bad sectors. You must run fsck manually to attempt to repair serious damage like superblocks. But if the hardware is bad…:’(