Disaster! My hard disk seems dead!!!!! Please help me! Thank you!

[feifeifei]

Hi All,

My web server is dead. It is a disaster for me.

Yesterday I heard big noise from the machine. Then I tried to login and reboot it. However, I am not allowed to login as the hard disk light was always on. The noise continued. After switching off the power, the machine could not be booted.

The error was quoted as follow:

Every thing is fine before these errors:

/home:
Error reading block 270061 (Attempt to read block from filesystem resulted in short read) while reading indirect blocks of inode 6353.

/usr: unexpected in consistency, RUN fsck MANUALLY
(ie – without –a or –p options)

***An error occurred during the file system check
***Dropping you to a shell. The system will reboot
***When you leave the shell
Give root password for maintenance

Anyone can help me? It is so important for me to recover this hard disk.

Thank you very very very much!!!

[dotwebbie]

Don't feel bad, you aren't the only person to have that happen to. It happened to me too. For future reference, some signs that may exist when the hd is going bad are:

• excessive access times
• unusual error messages
• hd scans (in windows, scandisk is an example) return too many errors
• files start disappearing/cannot be opened

When these start happening, never shut it down and try to back up as much data as possible and try to find a replacement hd if possible.

Okay. I used to know where to get a long list of recovering options but here are the ones off of my head.

• put the hd in a ziplock bag and stick it in the freezer. That's right, you heard me, stick it in the freezer. After a few hours, try and boot it up.
• Take the hard drive firmly in your hand and give it a good flick of the wrist. Immediately hook it up and attempt to boot. Give that no more than 3 tries. (Note: this is a last resort!)
• Gently *spank* the hard drive a few times. Sometimes that can free up locked platters.

I'll try and dig up my list and give you some more options. Of course, none of these will repair any damage done. This will give you only a short time to back up data.

[feifeifei]

Thanks very much for your suggestion!

I am going to try later.

[nashirak]

Hey how about this:

/usr: unexpected in consistency, RUN fsck MANUALLY
(ie ? without ?a or ?p options)

Do what the machine tells you! Just run fsck manually. I have been doing hardrive intinsive stuff, and have gotten the computer to crash like this a couple of times. There is just some inode that (6353) that is so bad that the computer cant fix its own filesystem. Not to worry! When the computer drops you into a shell just type

fsck /dev/hda (or whatever)

usually when this program runs automatically (like when you turn the power off on you machine and it has to check for filesystem integrity) it runs like this (which is hidden to you)

fsck -a -p /dev/hda

This tells the computer, -a: fix the file system automatically, and -p is dont prompt the user with the question "Would you like to fix node ....". Sometimes though, fsck relizes its not got enough information to put the system completely back together. So it fails with that error and says run the thing manually. So when you run it as above it will ask if you want to fix .... . Answer yes. After you are done, it should put a bunch of garbage files in /tmp (i think). Which are data from the hardisk that the filesystem doesnt know where it went previously. Dont worry, these are usually just parts of log files.
To prevent this from happening? Try a kernel compile, and enable ext3 journaling. Journalling keeps a record of everything open and then when the system dies, it knows exactly what to fix. You might see an extra 2 seconds in boot, and thats it. So you could almost say it was safe (although still not recommended) to just turn your computer off and on.
What dotwebbie talked about are if your HD is bad. I would try this before doing that. IMHO it would be bad if after the BIOS boot the computer came up with " NO OPERATING SYSTEM FOUND", this means that it couldnt find an OS on the boot sector of the disk ie the disk is bad cause it cant read from it. But you can boot to a certain point (ie your HD is working) but its just a couple of inodes that are screwed up.

Hope this Helps!

[dotwebbie]

Well, I said what I said because of this:

After switching off the power, the machine could not be booted.

If he can get it booted, by all means do what you suggested.

[nashirak]

He should be able to because the error that he is getting is after the Kernel is decompressed and loaded into memory. THe next step (or mabye the step after next) would be to check the filesystem. So this is Linux throwing an error not the BIOS (thats an even scarier message ). The kernel is going to be nice, and before the machine begins to load the partition on the disk (I think thats correct) its going to allow you to login to the machine (Ie. "give root passwd for maintince"). After he does this he should have a basic SH shell, where he can execute a couple of commands, one of which is fsck.

Hmmm... Hardriver in the freezer, I havent tried anything thing that drastic since I used to "blow" in my 8bit nintindo machine to get the game to work.

[dotwebbie]

Originally posted by nashirak
He should be able to because the error that he is getting is after the Kernel is decompressed and loaded into memory. THe next step (or mabye the step after next) would be to check the filesystem. So this is Linux throwing an error not the BIOS (thats an even scarier message ). The kernel is going to be nice, and before the machine begins to load the partition on the disk (I think thats correct) its going to allow you to login to the machine (Ie. "give root passwd for maintince"). After he does this he should have a basic SH shell, where he can execute a couple of commands, one of which is fsck.

True. And yes, that message is quite the scary message. Especially when you muck up the MBR *looks around nonchalantly*

Hmmm... Hardriver in the freezer, I havent tried anything thing that drastic since I used to "blow" in my 8bit nintindo machine to get the game to work.

Yeah, I have never tried it myself but I do hear it works quite well. As for blowing in the nes, those were the good old days.
feifeifei: are you still there? Just a note that if your hd is indeed bad (which it does sound like it is to me), you have a small timeframe to work in.