[Bug 211733] ext4 file system unrecoverable corruption

[bugzilla-daemon@bugzilla.kernel.org]

https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=211733

Theodore Tso (tytso@mit.edu) changed:

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--- Comment #1 from Theodore Tso (tytso@mit.edu) ---
The symptoms may be the same as a news article from 8 or 9 years ago, but that
particular bug was solved a *long* time ago.

Unfortunately, there are many different potential causes of data loss.  It
could be caused by bad partition tables, such that (for example) the Windows 7
partition overlaps (or Windows 7 thinks that) the partition overlaps with the
Linux system.   It could be caused by hardware problems.   It could becaused by
the user incorrectly using the GUI.  There's no way to tell based on the
complete lack of data in the bug report.

It's much like sending a doctor an e-mail complaining with a tinghtness of
chest and trouble breathing, but not giving the doctor any medical history, no
ability for the doctor to give the patient a reading of an ECG, etc.

You're going to have to reproduce it, and do this with a large number of small
checks.   Try copying data from Windows 7 to Linux.  Check to see if the data
is there in Linux.  Try rebooting from Linux into Linux, and see if the data is
there.  Then try rebooting into Windows and do some things, recording exactly
what you are doing, and then try rebooting back into Linux and check the
Documents folder.

Then (using a command line interface, so it's easier to capture the output and
report it to a bug tracker), you need to get a printout of the partition table,
and/or the Logical Volume and Physical Volume layout if you are using LVM, and
also grab the kernel logs to see if there are any errors reported by the file
system or device drivers, etc.

If you don't know how to do this, it's much more likely that the problem is
user error, and my best suggestion is to find a local Linux user's group and
ask for help.   Those folks might ask lots of potentially insultning questions,
such as making sure that you were cleanly shutting down the system before
rebooting back from Linux to Windows, or before powering down the computer; but
those sorts of questions tend to be less insulting when someone asks you in
person as opposed to via phone or e-mail tech support when people are obligated
to ask the "are you sure the computer is plugged in" kind of basic questions.

Good luck!

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