help! can i recover my data?

[jay-R5TnC2l8y5lBDgjK7y7TUQ at public.gmane.org]

Fisrt off if the data is important and not backed up you should cc the drive if you can before doing anything.  Then work recovery on the copy.

Second fsck is a good start but it sounds like you have drive issues and fsck isn't designed to fix drives just file systems.  I'd recomend spinrite, not open source but its well writen and how gibson supports his family.  Or one of the open source drive recovery options, names escape me at the moment.

Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone with SprintSpeed

-----Original Message-----
From: Robert La Ferla <robertlaferla-Wuw85uim5zDR7s880joybQ at public.gmane.org>

Date: Thu, 13 Aug 2009 18:17:35 
To: blug Linux/Unix<discuss-mNDKBlG2WHs at public.gmane.org>
Subject: help!  can i recover my data?


Is it possible for me to recover my data?  I saw errors in the logs  
(see below) and tried fscking the drive (see part of the log below -  
in the middle of this email) and then now when I try to fsck I get this:


Current situation:

# fsck /dev/sdc1
fsck 1.40.6 (09-Feb-2008)
e2fsck 1.40.6 (09-Feb-2008)
fsck.ext2: Attempt to read block from filesystem resulted in short  
read while trying to open /dev/sdc1
Could this be a zero-length partition?



Previous attempts at fsck:



# fsck /dev/sdc1
fsck 1.40.6 (09-Feb-2008)
e2fsck 1.40.6 (09-Feb-2008)
Superblock has an invalid ext3 journal (inode 8).
Clear<y>? yes

*** ext3 journal has been deleted - filesystem is now ext2 only ***

/dev/sdc1 contains a file system with errors, check forced.
Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes
Error reading block 65538 (Attempt to read block from filesystem  
resulted in short read) while getting next inode from scan.  Ignore  
error<y>? yes

Force rewrite<y>? yes

Error reading block 65539 (Attempt to read block from filesystem  
resulted in short read) while getting next inode from scan.  Ignore  
error<y>? yes

Force rewrite<y>? yes

...
....


I was getting these errors:

98/00:00:39:00:00/e0 tag 0 dma 32768 in
          res 51/40:00:11:5c:98/00:00:39:00:00/f0 Emask 0x9 (media  
error)
ata5.00: status: { DRDY ERR }
ata5.00: error: { UNC }
ata5.00: configured for UDMA/100
ata5: EH complete
ata5.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x0
ata5.00: BMDMA2 stat 0x181c8109
ata5.00: cmd 25/00:40:0f:5c:98/00:00:39:00:00/e0 tag 0 dma 32768 in
          res 51/40:00:11:5c:98/00:00:39:00:00/f0 Emask 0x9 (media  
error)
ata5.00: status: { DRDY ERR }
ata5.00: error: { UNC }
ata5.00: configured for UDMA/100
ata5: EH complete
ata5.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x0
ata5.00: BMDMA2 stat 0x181c8109
ata5.00: cmd 25/00:40:0f:5c:98/00:00:39:00:00/e0 tag 0 dma 32768 in
          res 51/40:00:11:5c:98/00:00:39:00:00/f0 Emask 0x9 (media  
error)
ata5.00: status: { DRDY ERR }
ata5.00: error: { UNC }
ata5.00: configured for UDMA/100
ata5: EH complete
ata5.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x0
ata5.00: BMDMA2 stat 0x181c8109
ata5.00: cmd 25/00:40:0f:5c:98/00:00:39:00:00/e0 tag 0 dma 32768 in
          res 51/40:00:11:5c:98/00:00:39:00:00/f0 Emask 0x9 (media  
error)