Re: Btrfs system won't start on Ubuntu (relationship problems...)

[Jordan Uggla <jordan.uggla@gmail.com>]

On Sun, Mar 13, 2011 at 9:39 AM, J=E9r=F4me Poulin <jeromepoulin@gmail.=
com> wrote:
> Re-send as non-HTML
> On Sun, Mar 13, 2011 at 7:46 AM, Peter Stuge <peter@stuge.se> wrote:
>>
>> Pau Iranzo wrote:
>> > I installed Ubuntu on my girlfriend's laptop using btrfs as a
>> > filesystem. But a few weeks ago something happened: the system
>> > wouldn't boot and always show these messages:
>> > http://dl.dropbox.com/u/120126/btrfs/IMG_20110313_122119.jpg
>> > http://dl.dropbox.com/u/120126/btrfs/IMG_20110313_122125.jpg
>> > http://dl.dropbox.com/u/120126/btrfs/IMG_20110313_122143.jpg
>>
>> The hard drive is broken.
>>
>> This would have happened at the same point in time regardless of
>> btrfs or not, and regardless of Linux or not.
>>
>
> Just to confirm, the hard disk is broken, I guess you installed Ubunt=
u
> first because Windows was getting slow, it probably was the hard disk
> at this time.
>
>>
>> > The problem is that there is now way to mount that partition and a=
ll
>> > the analysis tools don't give any information. I know there is no =
fsck
>> > for btrfs, so it is just a shame for me, because my girlfriend is
>> > really angry at me for this.
>> >
>> > Foremost is not able to recover files neither.
>> >
>> > Could anyone help me on this? I don't mind if the system does not
>> > start, but I need to recover some files (pictures basically).
>>
>> Take out the disk from the machine. Get a USB-adapter. Prepare for
>> running dd_rescue on another Linux system. Hook up broken drive. Run
>> dd_rescue to make a copy of the disk that you can work on. Disconnec=
t
>> broken drive. Every second it is powered the chance to recover data
>> decreases. Only power it up when you must, and when you are well
>> prepared to extract complete contents from the disk. Try to analyze
>> how the btrfs is broken. Try to fix it. Mount and recover data.
>>
>> Meanwhile buy new hard drive and reinstall a system so your friend
>> has a working computer.
>>
>
> Never plug a defective drive on USB if it is the source, only the
> destination can be plugged USB, else defective sectors get transferre=
d
> as good filled with random stuff and it only makes data recovery
> worst, also, there is ddrescue and dd_rescue, you try both, just make
> sure you save a logfile, I don't remember if dd_rescue has one.

I would highly recommend using GNU ddrescue over dd_rescue. The reason
are that 1: I have had great success with GNU ddrescue 2: It appears
from the description of dd_rescue :
http://www.garloff.de/kurt/linux/ddrescue/ that it attempts smaller
block sizes on the *first* pass, which could further decrease the
lifespan of the drive before getting all of the blocks which can be
read with a larger block size. For information about GNU ddrescue's
algorithm for getting as much data as possible from a failing drive
see "info ddrescue".

--=20
Jordan Uggla (Jordan_U on irc.freenode.net)
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