Recovering files from a dead HD?

Hey all...
Yesterday I tried burning an Audio CD with cdrecord, and since it was a 90min CD-R I had a lot of songs there. cdrecord failed the burning and said I could use -ignsize if I'm sure my drive is capable to burn this kind of CD. I guess it wasn't, but now it's too late... cdrecord died after ~5 tracks, and weird stuff started happening. First I got 'Read-only filesystem" error when trying to run some program, so I wanted to check what's going on, but 'mount' wasn't there. I tired ls'ing the /usr/bin directory, but didn't have permissions. After a minute or so, my 'screen' session died with 'signal 7', the mouse froze, and then everything else.
I did an hard-reboot and my BIOS said it has nowhere to boot from. I'm using a laptop - Dell Inspirion 6400, and the tools that came with it on the BIOS said there's no HD.
Now, that's what happened. Later on, I tried these steps:
I booted from an Arch CD to find it doesn't recognize no HD - there was no /dev/sd* nor /dev/hd*. After messing around, I did a boot without the CD and GRUB came up. It was slow, very slow, but the kernel loaded and the boot started. It got to the point where it should mount my root filesystem, /dev/sda4, and it starting "Checking transaction log". I'm using a ReiserFS on this filesystem. After a while (it took about 10 minutes), a few errors showed up with "ata1.01:" "softreset", "SRST Error", etc'. Then - a kernel panic.
Doing some tests, I saw that whenever I try booting from Arch's CD - it doesn't know nothing about my /dev/sda, unless I boot it with 'arch root=/dev/sda4", which then starts the drive, shows all the partitions on it, but fails with the same kernel panic after "Checking transaction log".
Actually, I don't mind much about the drive. I got backups of most of the stuff there, unless one important thing - my poetry directory, which has about 200 text-files of my poems. I don't have any kind of backup of it, and it would be awful to lose it.
The thing is I can't run any of reiserfs repair tools, since if boot without specifying "root=/dev/sda4" I don't have any /dev/sda4 to repair. If I boot with it, it won't pass the check.
I tried passing 'root=/dev/sda2' to my boot entry, which is my boot ext2 partition, but I got a kernel panic not finding init in there. Though, I does starts and list my HD's partitions.
Any advice would be a lot of help to me.
I'm thinking about 2 options:
- Disabling the check and hope I can see some files. Is there anyway to skip the check?
- Booting without passing the 'root' argument, but repopulating the /dev/ directory so it will find my sda drive. How can repopulate it? How can I repeat the steps the 'root=/dev/sda4' does, so it starts my drive?
Any other idea is good too I've got nothing to do but try.
Thanks a lot, and hope I didn't miss to much info (I can't copy-n-pass logs...).
Yo'av.
Last edited by bjesus (2008-01-04 11:41:43)

Well, I've made a few steps but still need some help.
I managed to start the computer with the HD on by passing 'swap=/dev/sda3' to the kernel. This way it starts the drive and doesn't fail - the sda3 partition is working good.
Now I can see sda4 - my data partition - and dd it, reiserfsck it, etc'.
So I tried use dd on it, and well - it partly worked. After creating 1.5GB file - errors started taking over - the HD shut down. Since then, I tried it a couple of times more, with no luck - at some point, the HD doesn't response until reboot.
So I'm left with my 1.5GB file, but I'm dieing to see what files it has in it.
How can I?
I don't want to do dd it to the dead partition, because maybe I'll be able to get some more stuff from there later on. I don't want to overwrite it.
I can't make it to mount -o loop. I've sent the file through ssh to another computer, but when I try to mount it, using
mount -o loop,offset=937681920 -t reiserfs imagefile directory
but it won't work. My logs says this:
Jan 10 18:44:00 localhost kernel: [343413.589447] ReiserFS: loop0: found reiserfs format "3.6" with standard journal
Jan 10 18:44:00 localhost kernel: [343413.589842] ReiserFS: loop0: using ordered data mode
Jan 10 18:44:00 localhost kernel: [343413.590388] ReiserFS: loop0: journal params: device loop0, size 8192, journal first block 18, max trans len 1024, max batch 900, max commit age 30, max trans age 30
Jan 10 18:44:00 localhost kernel: [343413.594227] ReiserFS: loop0: checking transaction log (loop0)
Jan 10 18:44:00 localhost kernel: [343413.595220] attempt to access beyond end of device
Jan 10 18:44:00 localhost kernel: [343413.595231] loop0: rw=1, want=209977472, limit=2900768
Jan 10 18:44:00 localhost kernel: [343413.595238] Buffer I/O error on device loop0, logical block 26247183
Jan 10 18:44:00 localhost kernel: [343413.595247] lost page write due to I/O error on loop0
Jan 10 18:44:00 localhost kernel: [343413.596053] attempt to access beyond end of device
Jan 10 18:44:00 localhost kernel: [343413.596060] loop0: rw=1, want=163580824, limit=2900768
Jan 10 18:44:00 localhost kernel: [343413.596065] Buffer I/O error on device loop0, logical block 20447602
Jan 10 18:44:00 localhost kernel: [343413.596071] lost page write due to I/O error on loop0
Jan 10 18:44:00 localhost kernel: [343413.596874] attempt to access beyond end of device
Jan 10 18:44:00 localhost kernel: [343413.596881] loop0: rw=1, want=134684064, limit=2900768
Jan 10 18:44:00 localhost kernel: [343413.596886] Buffer I/O error on device loop0, logical block 16835507
Jan 10 18:44:00 localhost kernel: [343413.596892] lost page write due to I/O error on loop0
Jan 10 18:44:00 localhost kernel: [343413.597724] attempt to access beyond end of device
Jan 10 18:44:00 localhost kernel: [343413.597732] loop0: rw=1, want=228099096, limit=2900768
Jan 10 18:44:00 localhost kernel: [343413.597738] Buffer I/O error on device loop0, logical block 28512386
Jan 10 18:44:00 localhost kernel: [343413.597743] lost page write due to I/O error on loop0
Jan 10 18:44:00 localhost kernel: [343413.598546] attempt to access beyond end of device
Jan 10 18:44:00 localhost kernel: [343413.598553] loop0: rw=1, want=170383736, limit=2900768
Jan 10 18:44:00 localhost kernel: [343413.598558] Buffer I/O error on device loop0, logical block 21297966
Jan 10 18:44:00 localhost kernel: [343413.598564] lost page write due to I/O error on loop0
Jan 10 18:44:00 localhost kernel: [343413.599416] attempt to access beyond end of device
Jan 10 18:44:00 localhost kernel: [343413.599424] loop0: rw=1, want=130418480, limit=2900768
Jan 10 18:44:00 localhost kernel: [343413.599809] attempt to access beyond end of device
Jan 10 18:44:00 localhost kernel: [343413.599816] loop0: rw=1, want=129253888, limit=2900768
Jan 10 18:44:00 localhost kernel: [343413.600200] attempt to access beyond end of device
Jan 10 18:44:00 localhost kernel: [343413.600207] loop0: rw=1, want=129253776, limit=2900768
Jan 10 18:44:00 localhost kernel: [343413.600590] attempt to access beyond end of device
Jan 10 18:44:00 localhost kernel: [343413.600597] loop0: rw=1, want=191897064, limit=2900768
Jan 10 18:44:00 localhost kernel: [343413.600981] attempt to access beyond end of device
Jan 10 18:44:00 localhost kernel: [343413.600988] loop0: rw=1, want=205783160, limit=2900768
Jan 10 18:44:00 localhost kernel: [343413.602422] ReiserFS: loop0: warning: journal-1226: REPLAY FAILURE, fsck required! buffer write failed
Jan 10 18:44:00 localhost kernel: [343413.602442] ReiserFS: loop0: warning: Replay Failure, unable to mount
Jan 10 18:44:00 localhost kernel: [343413.603300] ReiserFS: loop0: warning: sh-2022: reiserfs_fill_super: unable to initialize journal space
Jan 10 18:44:11 localhost kernel: [343424.499399] ReiserFS: loop0: warning: sh-2021: reiserfs_fill_super: can not find reiserfs on loop0
Jan 10 18:49:34 localhost kernel: [343747.442696] ReiserFS: loop0: warning: sh-2021: reiserfs_fill_super: can not find reiserfs on loop0
Jan 10 18:50:31 localhost kernel: [343803.939307] ReiserFS: loop0: warning: sh-2021: reiserfs_fill_super: can not find reiserfs on loop0
Jan 10 18:52:29 localhost kernel: [343921.886901] ReiserFS: loop0: warning: sh-2021: reiserfs_fill_super: can not find reiserfs on loop0
Any idea how to mount the file? I calculated the offset from 512*1831410 (the start of the partition, by fdisk -ul), though I get pretty much the same error without the offset. I know the image creation did not complete, but I'm hoping at least some of my files of interest are there.
Anyone know a program which can see the files in it? Something?
Thanks.
Last edited by bjesus (2008-01-10 16:59:27)

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