[NCLUG] Hard disk failure

[dobbster]

Hello,

Following various suggestions, I have tried to repair my drive.  I haven't done
a 'mke2fs' on it; wouldn't that erase all of my data?

Instead, I attempted e2fsck, using the superblocks obtained from the DOS utility
'findext2.exe' from Svend Olaf Mikkelsen's site.  Here was the result on
/dev/hda2:

[root at rescue]# /sbin/e2fsck /dev/hda2 -n -b 32768
e2fsck 1.18, 11-Nov-1999 for EXT2 FS 0.5b, 95/08/09
/dev/hda2 was not cleanly unmounted, check forced.
./e2fsck: Illegal triply indirect block found while reading bad blocks inode
This doesn't bode well, but we'll try to go on...
Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes
Bad block inode has illegal block(s).  Clear? no

Illegal block #0 (1145782346) in bad block inode.  IGNORED.
Illegal block #1 (1044858170) in bad block inode.  IGNORED.
Illegal block #2 (1161446473) in bad block inode.  IGNORED.
Illegal block #3 (1077819200) in bad block inode.  IGNORED.
Illegal block #4 (994328119) in bad block inode.  IGNORED.
Illegal block #5 (1043808322) in bad block inode.  IGNORED.
Illegal block #6 (1128216898) in bad block inode.  IGNORED.
Illegal block #7 (977551674) in bad block inode.  IGNORED.
Illegal block #8 (1110917189) in bad block inode.  IGNORED.
Illegal block #9 (1027552318) in bad block inode.  IGNORED.
Illegal block #10 (876428851) in bad block inode.  IGNORED.
Illegal block #11 (976436283) in bad block inode.  IGNORED.
Illegal block #-1 (825634616) in bad block inode.  IGNORED.
Illegal block #-2 (775368488) in bad block inode.  IGNORED.
Illegal block #-3 (1010122293) in bad block inode.  IGNORED.
Error while iterating over blocks in inode 1: Illegal triply indirect block
found 
[root at rescue]#

I get the same results using other superblocks besides 32768.  Shouldn't there
be superblocks prior to that?

Now, the 'findext2.exe' did correctly find the correct size and CHS start and
end for each partition, and like I said, 'fdisk' seems to show a correct
partition table.  I get about the same result on both of my physical disks (so I
know it's not a problem with the physical disks themselves.)

It seems weird that installing some Windows software could cause all of this
damage.  I don't even know what an "illegal triply indirect block" is.

Any clue?

Thanks for all of the suggestions...  I wish I could restore these disks from
backup, and I wish I did have a RAID array, but I'm running cheaply here.  This
system is primarily a backup for another system and a repository for mp3s.  Most
of the stuff except for the mp3s can be recovered elsewhere, but I still hate to
see it go...

Mark (dobbster at dobbster.com)