[gentoo-user] [OT] Problem with disk: cannot mount as ext3 but can as ext2

[gregory.sacre@gmail.com]

Hello,


I had a hard disk attached on an old RedHat PC formatted and mounted
as ext3 filesystem.
I removed the hard disk from the PC and plugged it in my Gentoo box. I
tried to mount it as ext3 file system and got this error:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| # mount -t ext3 /dev/hdd1 /jukebox
| mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/hdd1,
|        missing codepage or other error
|        In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
|        dmesg | tail  or so
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I then tried to see the partition type with fdisk:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Command (m for help): p
|
| Disk /dev/hdd: 81.9 GB, 81964302336 bytes
| 16 heads, 63 sectors/track, 158816 cylinders
| Units = cylinders of 1008 * 512 = 516096 bytes
|
|    Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
| /dev/hdd1               1      158816    80043232+  83  Linux
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

My next step was to try to repair it with fsck.ext3:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| # fsck.ext3 -p /dev/hdd
| fsck.ext3: Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/hdd
| /dev/hdd:
| The superblock could not be read or does not describe a correct ext2
| filesystem.  If the device is valid and it really contains an ext2
| filesystem (and not swap or ufs or something else), then the superblock
| is corrupt, and you might try running e2fsck with an alternate superblock:
|     e2fsck -b 8193 <device>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I tried what was written with e2fsck:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| # e2fsck -b 8193 /dev/hdd
| e2fsck 1.39 (29-May-2006)
| e2fsck: Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/hdd
|
| The superblock could not be read or does not describe a correct ext2
| filesystem.  If the device is valid and it really contains an ext2
| filesystem (and not swap or ufs or something else), then the superblock
| is corrupt, and you might try running e2fsck with an alternate superblock:
|     e2fsck -b 8193 <device>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

After googling for a while, and not really finding an answer, I tried
to mount it as readonly, and because of a typo, I mounted it as
ext2... and it worked!!! I tried then to mount it normally, not
anymore as read-only with ext2 format... and it worked!!!
So my first question is: how come?
I'm sure the filetype is ext3 as it can be seen in my old fstab:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| [...]
| /dev/hdb5               swap                    swap    defaults        0 0
| #/dev/hdc1               /jukebox               ext3    defaults
  1 1    --> this is the one ;-)
| [...]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I thought maybe I could try to repair it with the normal fsck:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| # fsck /dev/hdd1
| fsck 1.39 (29-May-2006)
| e2fsck 1.39 (29-May-2006)
| /dev/hdd1: Attempt to read block from filesystem resulted in short
  read while reading block 525
|
| /dev/hdd1: Attempt to read block from filesystem resulted in short
  read reading journal superblock
|
| fsck.ext3: Attempt to read block from filesystem resulted in short
  read while checking ext3 journal for /dev/hdd1
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Is there anything wrong with my hardware? Is it a super-block problem?
Is there a way to solve it?

Thank you in advance!

Greg
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