A Sensation Uncomfortably Like Death

by Ethan Johnson
January 16, 2007

If a kindly soul comes across this article over the next 5 days, please forward it to anyone who might be able to offer up a solution to my crisis.

My hard drive crashed. Big time.

Fortunately, to some extent, I burned two DVDs worth of data in anticipation of possibly dumping Kubuntu for some other breed of Linux. However, thanks to some ill advice about how to handle an audio card problem, the name of my filesystem got stripped off of my hard drive (WTF?!!!) and now it cannot boot, ever. Yes, I ran "fsck" with Knoppix. Yes, I ran other commands that relate to "fsck". No deal. It says my "magic number" is either bad or missing outright, and the recovery tools can't find any superblocks. (I can't mount the partition in Knoppix, so no sweat about running "fsck" on a mounted partition.) I had been in the midst of thinning out the contents of my 145GB hard drive and got it down to about 60GB of data, but in short, 60GB of data is a lot to lose. Including our vacation photos from last year, that were all digital, baby.

Like I always say, blessed are the pessimists, for they made backups.

On the up side, Linux is an area of much discussion and advice online, so several cut-and-paste searches helped turn up some helpful advice. However, there are limits. To put this in non-technical terms, imagine seeking communal advice as to how best to peel an orange. Someone may say "use your fingernails." Reply: "My fingernails aren't long enough." Follow-up: "Then you won't be able to peel the orange." Actually, using a butter knife in lieu of fingernails works too. It's that propensity to shop just short of another beneficial step that is irking me to no end.

I was really bottoming out thinking about the highlights of the 60GB of data that I stand to lose when I re-partition the drive. Our vacation photos, the raw video files for the next cooking show I was planning to produce, photos of our dogs, and so on. I felt kinship with the dead, where all of their Neat Stuff remains on this mortal coil while the eternal part of them moves on to other things. "I can't take any of this with me," I thought. But - it's nice to have around while I'm here.

Fortunately, my tenacity kicked in and I refused to take drive/data loss for an answer. I found a program called TestDisk (and by extension, PhotoRec). TestDisk says that there's nothing wrong with my drive's geometry, but no amount of persuasion is bringing my old OS back. So I ran PhotoRec, which scans the partition for files by type, and allows for data recovery. BUT. The original file names are not preserved. Instead, what was once "photo_of_my_dog_111206.jpg" becomes "f97950456.jpg". I'll take it, just the same. It's an arduous process, not helped in the least by the flakiness of the Knoppix LiveCD. I view any file recovery as a small victory, as I just as easily could have lost all of it, period.

Here is another wrinkle to the story: My affected hard drive is SATA. Every other drive we own is IDE. I can't "just" slave the bad drive off of a good one, at least not with the same IDE cable. Theoretically, if I can get say, OpenSUSE on a good drive, and slave the bad one to it, then I should supposedly be able to see the data on the bad drive and back it all up to my satisfaction. But I'm deeply skeptical about this, as the Knoppix CD should be acting in that capacity anyway, and it insists that there is nothing to mount because the filesystem is not identified. I'd rather not mess around with installing a new drive, loading OpenSUSE, figuring out how to slave the SATA drive to it, and booting up the whole mess only to learn that OpenSUSE can't figure it out either.

What really irks me is that when I try to boot the bad drive, I get a com,amd prompt that allows me to move around the old filesystem and SEE MY DATA. ARRRRGGGGHHHH! I have tried all sorts of shenanigans to copy the data somewhere using the command prompt, but it insists that nothing can be done, look don't touch.

I won't be able to recover all of my trapped data with PhotoRec, but like I said, anything counts.

Issue Summary:

  • OS: Kubuntu 6.10 "Edgy"
  • Can't boot. At all.
  • "fsck" command(s) in Knoppix says that the filesystem is unknown, and I've got a bad Magic Number. I've got a bad Magic Number. I've got a bad Magic Number, got me so blind I can't see...
  • I can't mount the partition in Knoppix due to "unknown" file system. I assume this will be true of any other OS.
  • I ran a command that searched the entire drive for backup Superblocks, and came up empty. Manual Superblock (such as -b 8193) switches didn't fool anyone.

Lessons Learned:

  • Back it up: I don't have one of those data backup boxes, but I sure as hell am going to get one, soon. Not that it helps me this instant, but I deal in file sizes that are way too large for even DVD-R backups anymore. Time for the rough stuff. Just the same, my photo galleries weighed in at 2.2GB, which would have fit comfortably on a DCD-R with room to spare. That was the NEXT disc I was going to burn when my drive died.
  • Fear the mullet: Now they tell me. I read excellent advice last night that said to make two partitions when loading an operating system: One for the OS itself, and one for the data. "Business in front, party in the back." If the OS dies (which is what happened to me), the data is secure on its own partition anyway. I am SO doing that next time.
  • Don we now our lab coats: Mar insists that I need a "lab" computer to trash so that the "production" one stays intact. It might be nice, but the more economical solution will be to use two partitions. And lots and lots of backups.
  • Could be worse: I could have lost the data entirely (including my backups) in a fire, flood, tornado, whatever. At some point one must be philosophical and respect the transient nature of digital data. As for me, I'm raging against the dying of the light and all of that jazz.
  • Ask twice, think thrice: The sound card advice I read seemed plausible enough (and really should not have resulted in this nightmare). I should have done a few more searches to corroborate the expected outcome. More than a few times a comment thread brims with concurrence, and at the last second someone rides in and says "but you'll kill your hard drive that way."

Recovery work continues apace, but if anyone had this happen to them and found a miraculous solution (that resulted in data recovery, not paving over the drive) I'm very interested in hearing about it. Thanks! <EM>

( categories: | | | | )
I wish I could help you with
Submitted by trumwill (not verified) on Tue, 2007-01-16 17:01.

I wish I could help you with the problem at hand, but instead I'll just offer some general thoughts from my experience:

I would go one step further than having a separate data partition: have a separate hard-drive. I came by this one the hard way, but I have breathed easier ever since. If nothing else, you can disconnect the second hard-drive if you're about to do anything potentially hazardous. I've twice had partition formatting expand beyond the scope of the partition I had assigned. Now I go even one step further and have the data on a computer all to itself, though that's more than most people need to do.

I also agree with your wife that you should have a machine to play around with. You can get decent used systems dirt cheap from Goodwill.

Lastly, no matter what happens, never format over a hard drive that has information on it that you want. No matter how dead the drive is, the chances that it will be recoverable someday are pretty good. Hard-drives are dirt cheap these days and getting cheaper, and I would start with a new one.

I appreciate it
Submitted by ethan on Tue, 2007-01-16 20:55.

I have a "cube" case, which holds exactly one hard drive internally, and one 5.25" drive (DVD-R). Fry's has a Maxtor 200GB internal HD (PATA) for a mere $70. I'm planning to get one to get my regular computing needs squared away, and then a second external drive for routine backups. I'm putting the "bad" HD on ice for now until I can recover the data later, like you said.

I'm also toying with switching to OpenSUSE 10.2. Not that (K)Ubuntu is completely at fault here, but perhaps this is a good time to kick a few other tires. I don't dislike Ubuntu, but maybe it's like getting into using online services with AOL, and growing out of it. The thing is, SUSE 10.0 was a disaster. But I hear that they've worked some key kinks out, and might be worth attempting to use. With 200GB under the hood, dual booting isn't entirely out of the question either. I'll for sure "mullet" the drive to ensure some sense of security, FWIW.

I did rescue over 3000 photos tonight, but sadly, the bulk were cached web files. Anyone need a "back" button? How about some forum avatars? Live and learn, anyway.

Maybe this is what you
Submitted by trumwill (not verified) on Tue, 2007-01-16 21:28.

Maybe this is what you meant, but I would get an internal harddrive with an enclosure rather than a purely external hard drive as it provides more flexibility. Sorry to hear about your case (though you probably aren't. I hate, hate, hate small cases with limited expandability, though my vitriol is not shared by many users).

Speaking of mulleting, perhaps the only area in which I consider my old Sony laptop to be superior to my ThinkPads is that the Sony Vaio separated out the boot drive and the HD. It made restoring the machine a breeze! I don't know why more laptop manufacturers don't do that.

Also, I meant to ask whether you've looked in to a data recovery center. It can be expensive, but along with a price quote you may be able to get an idea how recoverable the data is by providing them the information that you provided here.

Good luck with the alternative Linux distros. You sound like you may have learned enough to "graduate" from Ubuntu.

Graduated?
Submitted by ethan on Tue, 2007-01-16 22:08.

I think I've learned enough to cause my hard drive to not just crash next time, but physically burst into flames.

Irony of ironies, I was looking at "towers" at Fry's today and got the heebie-jeebies. I am so sick of bulky towers, so Mar and I got nearly matching "cubes". Less = more and alla that. Plus I liked the on-board stuff that would normally be that many PCI cards. I do use carded sound and video. I have my geek pride.

(I am using the Knoppix LiveCD to surf with in the meantime. Yay Live CDs!)

eBay has equipped towers for a song. I might go that route for the backup/lab machine. We'll see. I don't have lots of dough to sling around so I am trying to make my shots count. An enclosure for the "bad" HD is on my list though. Re: Data rec centers, I am going to check my stacks of erstwhile backups/purge discs to see how bad the situation is, really. Vacation photos are for sure trapped except for what I fortunately uploaded to this site - which most importantly were the family ones. The buildings can always be visited some other time. Or not.