Disk error - fsck doesn't want to help

Question

Hi there
yesterday there was a power cut, after that my kde seams to run fine, but suddenly there where a lot of errors in some blocks on /dev/sda8
kde broke and displayed them, afterwards i couldn't log in.
Now i'm trying to fix my hard disk using the desinfect live disk from CT Magazin (anyway the only live disk i had at home).
I can boot into KDE right now, the corrupted partition is the /home parition. but i cannot imagine a way to "clean" it up.
Every time i try to use fsck.ext3 /dev/sda8 i'll get this response:
e2fsck: Attempt to read block from filesystem resulted in short read beim Versuch, /dev/sda8 zu öffnen
Könnte es eine Partion der Länge Null sein?
It asks if the parition length is null. Does anyone here have a hint what i can do?
Greets
[desinfect@localhost ~]$ sudo mke2fs -n /dev/sda8
mke2fs 1.41.9 (22-Aug-2009)
Dateisystem-Label=
OS-Typ: Linux
Blockgröße=4096 (log=2)
Fragmentgröße=4096 (log=2)
23592960 Inodes, 94363794 Blöcke
4718189 Blöcke (5.00%) reserviert für den Superuser
Erster Datenblock=0
Maximale Dateisystem-Blöcke=0
2880 Blockgruppen
32768 Blöcke pro Gruppe, 32768 Fragmente pro Gruppe
8192 Inodes pro Gruppe
Superblock-Sicherungskopien gespeichert in den Blöcken:
    32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912, 819200, 884736, 1605632, 2654208,
    4096000, 7962624, 11239424, 20480000, 23887872, 71663616, 78675968
[desinfect@localhost ~]$ sudo e2fsck -b 32768 /dev/sda8
e2fsck 1.41.9 (22-Aug-2009)
e2fsck: Attempt to read block from filesystem resulted in short read beim Versuch, /dev/sda8 zu öffnen
Könnte es eine Partion der Länge Null sein?

Answer 1

If it has any important data => dd_rescue if=/dev/sda8 of=~/backup/sda8.img and try e2fsck on the img so you can always retry when something goes wrong.
Did dmesg or other logfiles gave some info about the I/O error? (maybe use the -v flag for more verbosity)
Did you try the -b argument with all other backups of the superblock? Maybe you could try to use the -c argument also to disable the bad blocks and the -p argument for preening (it's quiet safe, but working on a backup img is always safer ;-) )
man e2fsck wrote:-c     This option causes e2fsck to  use  badblocks(8)
              program to do a read-only scan of the device in
              order to find  any  bad  blocks.   If  any  bad
              blocks  are  found,  they  are added to the bad
              block inode to prevent them  from  being  allo‐
              cated  to  a file or directory.  If this option
              is specified twice, then  the  bad  block  scan
              will be done using a non-destructive read-write
              test.
man e2fsck wrote:-p     Automatically repair ("preen") the file system.
              This option will cause e2fsck to  automatically
              fix  any filesystem problems that can be safely
              fixed without human  intervention.   If  e2fsck
              discovers  a problem which may require the sys‐
              tem administrator to take additional corrective
              action,  e2fsck will print a description of the
              problem and then exit with the  value  4  logi‐
              cally  or'ed into the exit code.  (See the EXIT
              CODE section.)  This option is normally used by
              the system's boot scripts.  It may not be spec‐
              ified at the same time as the -n or -y options.