Linux Community Magazine

An Ext2 file system contains a component named 'superblock' to save critical information about the file system. This component, if corrupted, gives an error at the time of mounting of the hard disk partition. The data saved in the hard disk partition becomes inaccessible after the superblock corruption error message pops up. An easy way to access the data post any such error message is by restoring it from an updated backup. However, if backup file is unreadable or incomplete, then the only option is to use a commercial Linux Data Recovery utility.

Consider a real-time scenario, wherein, you receive the underneath error message while trying to mount your hard drive volume:

":~$ sudo e2fsck -c /dev/sda1e2fsck 1.39 (29-May-2006)/dev/sda1: recovering journal/dev/sda1: Attempt to read block from filesystem resulted in short read while reading block Z

JBD: Failed to read block at offset 22321JBD: IO error -5 recovering block 22321 in log/dev/sda1: Attempt to read block from filesystem resulted in short read while reading block 23896

JBD: Failed to read block at offset 22328JBD: IO error -5 recovering block 22328 in log/dev/sda1: Attempt to read block from filesystem resulted in short read while reading block 23895

JBD: Failed to read block at offset 22327JBD: IO error -5 recovering block 22327 in loge2fsck: Bad magic number in super-block while trying to re-open /dev/sda1e2fsck: io manager magic bad! "

After the above error message appears, the data saved in the hard drive volume becomes inaccessible.

Cause:

As stated in the error message, the superblock is corrupted.

Resolution:

Below guidelines help you to isolate the above error message, and to rectify it:

* Run e2fsck -b command to repair the corrupted superblock.

* If the message persists after running the above command, then run the same command using an alternative superblock.

* However, if the problem continues, then you will need to re-install the operating system. Though this step ensures 100% success in resolving the above error message, it also deletes the data from your hard drive volume. To recover the lost data, you will need to opt for a third-party Linux Recovery application.

Data Recovery Linux tools are readily available on the Internet and can be used by any non-technical user.

Stellar Phoenix Linux Data Recovery recoups formatted files from Ext2, Ext3, Ext4, and FAT based hard drive volumes. The read only software supports almost all Linux distributions. The wizard-style interface of the Linux data Recovery tool makes the recovery process easy and simple. This tool supports recovery from IDE, EIDE, SATA, and other types of hard drives, and is compatible with a wide range of Linux distributions, like, SUSE, Ubuntu, Mandrake, Gentoo and SlackWare.