Missing inode table

[oliverjames]

As the saying goes " a little knowledge is a dangerous thing"!
Well to shorten a long story, I have an NSLU2 on my network with a usb disk attached. I plugged the disk into Mint and changed ownership of the saved files and directories; all seemed to be OK.

I suspect that I didn't wait long enough before disconnecting the disk as it is no longer possible to mount the partition where ownerships were changed.

Attempts to mount give
"mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sdb1, missing codepage or helper program, or other error In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try dmesg | tail or so ."

e2fsck gives
"e2fsck -f /dev/sdb1
e2fsck 1.40.8 (13-Mar-2008)
e2fsck: A block group is missing an inode table while checking ext3 journal for /dev/sdb1"

I would be really happy to recover the files on this disk. Is there any way to do this?

[Fred]

oliverjames,

I have a couple suggestions for you. First download and burn a copy of Puppy Linux. Below is the link for the version that I use. It is 155 MB. It makes a handy tool kit to keep around.

http://tmxxine.com/Wikka/wikka.php?wakk ... xxineShard

Boot this live cd iso and see if you can mount and read the partition in question. If so you should be able to move the data to a safe place.

If Puppy won't mount it, you can try converting the file system back to ext2. Sometimes stripping the journal and running e2fsck will clean up a broken ext3 file system. In a terminal type:

sudo tune2fs -O ^has_journal /dev/sdxx

and then

sudo e2fsck /dev/sdxx

Substitute the correct partition designator for the sdxx entries above.

Then try again with Puppy Linux. There is a good chance this will do the trick. Puppy runs in root so all the files you move will only be accessible to root. You can change the permissions back to your user name when you get back into your regular operating system.

Good kuck,

Fred

[oliverjames]

Thanks Fred, Downloading now. I'll see if that works.

Before making any changes I'd like to make an image of this Disk. Not sure if HdClone will work but I'll give it a try.

Oliverjames