From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Dec 4 21:07:21 2003 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id DC74416A4CE for ; Thu, 4 Dec 2003 21:07:21 -0800 (PST) Received: from web41103.mail.yahoo.com (web41103.mail.yahoo.com [66.218.93.19]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with SMTP id F1B4F43F85 for ; Thu, 4 Dec 2003 21:07:20 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from scott@sremick.net) Message-ID: <20031205050720.2485.qmail@web41103.mail.yahoo.com> Received: from [24.48.174.124] by web41103.mail.yahoo.com via HTTP; Thu, 04 Dec 2003 21:07:20 PST X-RocketYMMF: siremick Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2003 21:07:20 -0800 (PST) From: "Scott I. Remick" To: FreeBSD In-Reply-To: <20031204200348.5639640f.doublef@tele-kom.ru> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Subject: Re: "Cannot find file system superblock" error - how to recover? X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list Reply-To: scott@sremick.net List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 05 Dec 2003 05:07:22 -0000 --- Sergey 'DoubleF' Zaharchenko wrote: > I've got a (probably bad) idea. If you say that the partition was > mounted as /data, then you could do a > > # hd /dev/ad6s1 |grep /data > > It should come up soon (the superblock should be close to the beginning > of the drive, right?). This way you can at least figure out where your > superblock lies (rounding the address of `/data' to 8K). Considering the > above discussion, you can calculate the *correct* address of the `e' > partition by subtracting 8K or 64K or 256K. See if it matches the one in > the disklabel. > > Of course, this is all possible only if your superblock isn't screwed > enough to NOT contain `/data'. Been running about a minute so far... nada. So I guess your assumption is correct: the 1st superblock is destroyed (as fsck suggested when it barfed). > Just a minute. Are you sure that the filesystem was newfs'd with the > default parameters? If it were for me to newfs it, I would probably > choose larger block&fragment sizes, as I would probably be storing large > files. The superblock copy positions depend on the block/frag size. If > you specify parameters different from those used for actually newfs'ing > it the very first time, newfs -N will give you *incorrect* copy > addresses! Well, specifying custom block/frag sizes is a bit out of my customization forte at the moment, and certainly at the time this drive went in. I'm 99% positive I used sysinstall to set it up. I remember some quirks about the sysinstall method, and also deciding that the by-hand method was unnecessarily complicated for my needs. This has taught me that, should I ever choose to do that, that writing down these custom values is CRITICAL. Is there any way to positively identify a superblock location (say, using hd | grep ) using known information? Just a random thought. Although I'm treating this as a learning experience, I also REALLY REALLY don't want to loose all that data. I do appreciate the help you've been giving me. Thanks again. I'm choosing to remain optimistic. I used to salvage lots of data from DOS/Windows partitions (still do) so learning the tricks of the trade in my new OS of choice is important to me. (PS: already pricing out external USB hard drive enclosures for making backups of this drive in the future)