fixing corrupted disk

[alan.lmint]

Not sure this is a newbie question, but it's new to me.

Have an old Dell 1545 with 17.2 installed. Tried to update it, and the system crashed. Cannot boot into recovery mode as it runs fsck, finds multiple media errors, and terminates with:
"Call Trace:
dump_stack+0x41/0x52
panic+0x78/0x181
do_exit+0xBef/0x8f0
? vfs_write+0x13c/0x1b0
SyS_exit+0x16/0x20
syscall_call+0x7/0x7"
(Plus disk block numbers)

Tried to recover by booting a new version from usb stick. Got the live Mint, but when I tried to install it runs into the same hang.

Can't figure how to recover the file system. Don't care about any data. Would reformat, but can't get to tools or hard drive from live Mint.
Any thoughts on where to start, or if needed a different forum channel.
Thanks in advance.

[Pjotr]

Dead or dying disk. Replace it....

[alan.lmint]

Pretty sure the corruption resulted from a power down when the writes to disk were hung. Can't be the only one who screwed this up.

[Pjotr]

Well, I'm afraid it looks like physical damage to me....

[catweazel]

Not sure this is a newbie question, but it's new to me.

Have an old Dell 1545 with 17.2 installed. Tried to update it, and the system crashed.

I'm with Pjotr. It's a physical disk problem. I'm afraid that if you can't see anything on the disk at all then your data is gone.

[zaqcroyd]

Is there ANYTHING on that disk you care about? If not, you could always try to use Gparted on the LiveUSB to blow away all of the existing damaged partitions and start from scratch. However, just in case there really is physical problems with the disk or controller, you should figure out who the manufacturer is (Gparted should show you in the View>Device Information pane what the disk type and model is) and visit their web site to see if they provide a free surface analysis tool that you can run from Live Media. They usually need to run overnight and can often generate a bad blocks table that you can feed to the kernel (which only makes sense if there are only a few bad blocks; otherwise give up and buy a new disk).

If it was my machine (and assuming it takes SATA drives), I would just go buy a new SSD and start over - you will have a much faster machine when you are done.

[catweazel]

Is there ANYTHING on that disk you care about? If not, you could always try to use Gparted on the LiveUSB to blow away all of the existing damaged partitions and start from scratch.

That won't help on a physically dying disk. It's time to toss it, and as you said, consider getting an SSD.

[bob466]

Sounds like the HDD has died...as I see it you have two choices...buy a new HDD or since your Laptop is very old...buy a new Laptop.

[syg00]

Can't figure how to recover the file system. Don't care about any data. Would reformat, but can't get to tools or hard drive from live Mint.

Why not ?. A liveCD is the perfect place to run smartctl across the disk - that way you'll know for sure if the disk has failed..

[Mute Ant]

o It wouldn't hurt to disconnect and reconnect the drive (with the machine switched off) in case there's a poor connection.

o Sudden power-off might have damaged the drive electronics... not number one on my list though.

o You can do surface-scan 'readability' tests on any partition or drive, even when it's mounted. That gives the drive firmware a chance to mark bad blocks as due-for-retirement. They won't actually be retired until something is written, but that doesn't cause an error message. I use the gddrescue package for this. It gives you a chance to interrupt a test and continue later. Also you get good feedback of progress, speed and error count...
from="/dev/sda" ; into="/dev/zero" ; logf="/var/tmp/log.txt" ; sudo ddrescue --force $from $into $logf

Code: Select all

GNU ddrescue 1.19
Press Ctrl-C to interrupt
rescued:     1896 MB,  errsize:       0 B,  current rate:    30012 kB/s
   ipos:     1896 MB,   errors:       0,    average rate:   31094 kB/s
   opos:     1896 MB, run time:    1.01 m,  successful read:       0 s ago
Copying non-tried blocks... Pass 1 (forwards)

[alan.lmint]

Thanks all. Was looking for a quick fix. Clearly needs more work. Will continue this when I have the chance to spend some time working on it.