Linux Community Magazine

The EXT3 file system in Linux is divided into various block groups. Each block group further contains a data structure called group descriptors that contains critical information about the block. Corruption in group descriptors primarily occurs due to operating system malfunctioning, file system damage, malicious software like virus and more. Two major outcomes of corrupted group descriptors are unbootable system and inaccessible data. To successfully recover the lost data, restore it from the latest backup. In case, no recent backup is available or is invalid, you need to go for advancedLinux Recovery software.Consider a practical scenario, where you encounter the below error message when you attempt to boot your system:Uncompressing Linux:...Ok booting kernelaudit(xxx.x....x..:0): initializedEXT3-fs error (device hda3):ext3_check_descriptors:Block bitmap for grade 38 not int grade ( block 34799616)EXt3-fs:roup descriptors corrupted.Mount: error 22 mounting ext3pivot roo t ivot_root (/sysroot, /sysroot/initrd) failed: 2unmount/initrd/proc_failed:2kernel panic: No init found: Try passing init=0 to kernelYou encounter the same error message each time you attempt to boot your system. As a result of the above error, all your critical data becomes inaccessible.Cause:The above error message is encountered when group descriptors are corrupted. Resolution:To resolve the above issue and access the data, you need to use FSCK command. This command is mainly used to repair the EXT3 file system. But, if the file system has been badly corrupted, then this command fails to repair. In such circumstances, you need to recreate the file system again by formatting and reinstalling Linux. A clean reinstall of Linux will completely erase all data from the selected Linux volume. For complete and orderly recovery of data after reinstalling Linux, you will need to se powerful Linux Recovery software.These Linux Data Recovery applications ensure comprehensive scannin g of formatted Linux volumes by using powerful scanning algorithms. These recovery tools can recover and restore data after problems like group descriptors faults, Inode table damage and superblock corruption. They are built with highly graphical and interactive user interface that makes them easily understandable without prior technical skills. Stellar Phoenix Linux Data Recovery is the most efficient and trust worthy Linux Recovery tool. It supports Ext2, Ext3 and ReiserFS file systems based Linux volumes. This read only Data Recovery Linux application gets installed on Windows (Vista, XP, 2003 and 2000) and the affected Linux drive should be connected as slave.