(SOLVED) Trying to repair an HD, need some explanations.

[Danielsan]

Hi guys,

for some reason the RPI2 hd got damaged, now I am trying to fix it.

These are the partions:

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Disk /dev/sdb: 4.6 TiB, 5000981073920 bytes, 1220942645 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 4096 = 4096 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x000b46b3

Device     Boot   Start        End    Sectors  Size Id Type
/dev/sdb1          2048 1220941823 1220939776  4.6T  5 Extended
/dev/sdb5          2816    3934975    3932160   15G 83 Linux
/dev/sdb6       3935744 1220941055 1217005312  4.5T 83 Linux

Sdb5 and sdb6 are fine, my only concern is sda1:

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sudo fsck /dev/sdb1
fsck from util-linux 2.29
e2fsck 1.43.3 (04-Sep-2016)
ext2fs_open2: Bad magic number in super-block
fsck.ext2: Superblock invalid, trying backup blocks...
fsck.ext2: Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/sdb1

The superblock could not be read or does not describe a valid ext2/ext3/ext4
filesystem.  If the device is valid and it really contains an ext2/ext3/ext4
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>
 or
    e2fsck -b 32768 <device>

Found a dos partition table in /dev/sdb1

Can I use fsck on an extended partition or must I use a different tool?

Thanks

[dilberts_left_nut]

No.
sda1 is effectively just a container for your logical partitions sda5 & 6

[Danielsan]

No.
sda1 is effectively just a container for your logical partitions sda5 & 6

However seems the filesystem is corrupted, I see the files but I can't open or read them.
Anyway I used this command but the output doesn't make sense for me...

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sudo dosfsck /dev/sdb1
fsck.fat 4.0 (2016-05-06)
Logical sector size is zero.

EDIT

I tried to open the files directly from the drive, and fortunately they aren't corrupted (fiuuuu), however I am still unable to run OSMC.

[bw123]

dilberts_left_nut wrote:
No.
sda1 is effectively just a container for your logical partitions sda5 & 6



However seems the filesystem is corrupted, I see the files but I can't open or read them.

It's okay, there's no filesystem on an extended partition. If 5 and 6 are working correctly, that's all you got.

P.s. I used gdisk a few months ago on all my dos partition tables and converted to GPT. Now I'm thinking GPT is a lot easier and simpler. That extended partition stuff always was a bunch of nonsense.

[dilberts_left_nut]

I see the files but I can't open or read them.

What files?
How do you "see" them?

I tried to open the files directly from the drive

Can you explain further?

, and fortunately they aren't corrupted (fiuuuu), however I am still unable to run OSMC.

What is OSMC?

[Danielsan]

I am sorry I was speaking how you know everything, I am such a stupid...

My RPI2 has a unique os: OSMC (basically Kodi on top Debian Stable). OSMC is mounted on an external drive (pretty uncommon for the Pi's) and it serves also as samba server. For some reason, Samba was broken, I was able to fix it through the ssh connection. When I re-enabled Samba I was able to mount the partition and browse through the folders and see the files inside (mostly pictures) but I was unable to copy or open them. I was convinced to have some harddrive corruption but when I mounted through USB3 this HD I was able to open, see and copy all the files (fortunately) so at least the files weren't corrupted.

After fsck I checked the partitions are fine, now I launched a badblocks checking, so now after this last check I have to try to fix OSMC, that's all.

[pylkko]

Are you booting of the usb also? Because if the root is only on the USB HD, then you don't need to use a MBR partition table, you can GPT, AFAIK. When you say you are unable to run OSMC (a Raspbian based htpc OS) what exactly happens? Can it not find root or does the bootloader not even load?

[Danielsan]

Hi guys, as first none of the hard drive was corrupted. It was happened that some heavy folders were kept back on the media folder filling the root partition of the PI2, this broke everything but eventually I was able to fix it. Unfortunately I learned the PI is very unreliable to do very heavy files transfer, for example every time my wife takes the camera she fills almost 64giga of memory and we have a plenty of giga to backup every time. The pi is not the only medium we use to backup file (we are currently spreading on three drives, the pi2 is one of them) but as nas eventually is slow for transferring files, it's good as media player but as nas I will never use it as primary back-up destination.