# Running fsck broke my ext3 partition?

## gAzo0o

I have a 250gb maxtor hard drive made to one big ext3 partition. For some time, while booting, the partition complained that it needs to be fsck-ed manually, so I did and now this is what it gives me when I try to mount it.

```
[  818.428641] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Unhandled sense code

[  818.428644] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE

[  818.428650] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Sense Key : Medium Error [current] [descriptor]

[  818.428657] Descriptor sense data with sense descriptors (in hex):

[  818.428660]         72 03 11 04 00 00 00 0c 00 0a 80 00 00 00 00 00

[  818.428673]         00 00 00 49

[  818.428678] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Add. Sense: Unrecovered read error - auto reallocate failed

[  818.428686] end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 73

[  818.428716] ata3: EH complete

[  818.429302] EXT3-fs: can't read group descriptor 0
```

When I'm trying to run fsck now it gives me this:

```
e2fsck 1.41.8 (11-July-2009)

fsck.ext3: Attempt to read block from filesystem resulted in short read while trying to open /dev/sda1

Could this be a zero-length partition?
```

Is there any way to at least recover my data, if not to fix the partition. Or could it be a problem with my whole hard drive?

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## Hu

Messages from the hard disk driver indicate a problem lower than your filesystem.  If I had to guess, your disk is going bad and it has run out of shadow sectors to use to cover the deterioration.  Your system has been dying for a while.  You might be able to recover the data if you can get a full image of the disk via ddrescue or similar.  You can then load that image onto a good drive and try to repair the filesystem or recover the data once there.  Top priority now should be getting any valuable data off that drive.  Start with any data that is not in your most recent backup.

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## Elleni

I recently run into this too. First a warning. Do not ignore the warning of checking a mounted filesystem as I did, it ended in not bootable system which led me in a fresh installation   :Wink: 

When having used vmware-workstation noticed this prob again. At boot ext3 fs was mounted with errors...

Solution was to execute init1 followed by an mount -o remount,ro /dev/rootpartion (sda3 in my case) and afterwards it could do an e2fschck -c /dev/rootpartion. 

Thought I'de report although it seems to late I am afraid   :Embarassed: 

Try to mount it from a booted livecd system. It worked for me and I could move my needed date over to a usbstick before reinstalling..

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## Earthwings

 *Hu wrote:*   

> Messages from the hard disk driver indicate a problem lower than your filesystem.  If I had to guess, your disk is going bad and it has run out of shadow sectors to use to cover the deterioration.  Your system has been dying for a while.  You might be able to recover the data if you can get a full image of the disk via ddrescue or similar.  You can then load that image onto a good drive and try to repair the filesystem or recover the data once there.  Top priority now should be getting any valuable data off that drive.  Start with any data that is not in your most recent backup.

 Seconded. From my experience, the drive is going to die completely quite soon. Only power it on to get data off it, and try to keep it cool while powered on.

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## eccerr0r

 *gAzo0o wrote:*   

> 
> 
> ```
> e2fsck 1.41.8 (11-July-2009)
> 
> ...

 

If this is what you're getting now all the time, it might be too late.  The kernel couldn't read anything from the disk and offlined it.  If you had a fresh reboot and still does this, your data probably has gone to the afterlife  :Sad:   A hd recovery specialist may be able to recover some of it but it's expensive.  Leaving the drive off for a while might help the hardware pick up blocks from the disk after cooling a bit, but there's no guarantees.

As one says "there are two kinds of people in the world, one that makes backups, the other never had a hard drive fail."

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