[clue-tech] Bad superblock on a FAT32 partition

[David L. Willson]

Do NOT write anything to the drive until you have created a diagnostic
backup of the the whole disc, so that you can get back to where you are
now, if you goof something up.  That's especially important if you have
no other backup.

One way to do get a diagnostic copy is this:

dd if=/dev/hdf of=some-file-somewhere.image

If you have media problems, that might not succeed, and you'll need to
use the options that force dd to continue in spite of errors, but
usually the backup is useless when you have media errors.  Also, the
image file must be on a filesystem that supports large files.

Do you get anything from the drive while in Windows?  Windows XP is
actually quite good at recovering corruptions in FAT and NTFS.  I would
try CHKDSK F: /R /F, where F is the actual drive-letter.

I'd also want to see what Computer Management/Disk...  has to say about
it.

parted is great at guessing in destroyed partitions.

On Sat, 2007-01-06 at 20:49 -0600, Richard Knechtel wrote:
> I finished installing CentOS 4.4 and suddenly I can't get to my
> primary windows data drive, neither in Linux nor in windows. 
> 
> The drive is a 40 gig quantum fireball - it is/was formatter with
> FAT32 as one partition. 
> 
> Anyone, anyone have an idea how to recover this????? PLEASE!
> 
> Here is the specifics of what I was able to find so far - any other
> suggestions are welcome.
> 
> mount -t vfat /dev/hdf1 /windows/E
> mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/hdf1,
> or too many mounted file systems
> 
> from dmesg:
> hdf: QUANTUM FIREBALLP AS40.0, ATA DISK drive
> .........
> hdf: max request size: 128KiB
> hdf: 78177792 sectors (40027 MB) w/1902KiB Cache, CHS=65535/16/63,
> UDMA(66)
> hdf: cache flushes not supported
> hdf: hdf1
> .....
> FAT: bogus number of reserved sectors
> VFS: Can't find a valid FAT filesystem on dev hdf1.
> .....
> FAT: bogus number of reserved sectors
> VFS: Can't find a valid FAT filesystem on dev hdf1.
> FAT: invalid media value (0x01)
> VFS: Can't find a valid FAT filesystem on dev hdf.
> FAT: bogus number of reserved sectors
> VFS: Can't find a valid FAT filesystem on dev hdf1.
> FAT: bogus number of reserved sectors
> VFS: Can't find a valid FAT filesystem on dev hdf1.
> 
> >From fdisk:
> fdisk -l /dev/hdf
> 
> Disk /dev/hdf: 40.0 GB, 40027029504 bytes
> 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4866 cylinders
> Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
> 
> Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
> /dev/hdf1 * 1 4866 39086113+ c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
> 
> >From fsck:
> fsck.vfat /dev/hdf
> dosfsck 2.8, 28 Feb 2001, FAT32, LFN
> Currently, only 2 FATs are supported, not 191.
> 
> fsck /dev/hdf1 
> OR 
> fsck.vfat -r /dev/hdf1
> fsck 1.35 (28-Feb-2004)
> dosfsck 2.8, 28 Feb 2001, FAT32, LFN
> Cluster size is zero.
> 
> fsck.vfat -r -t /dev/hdf1
> dosfsck 2.8, 28 Feb 2001, FAT32, LFN
> Cluster size is zero.
> 
> Please help!
> Thanks
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