Ubuntu – Superblock errors

fsck

fsck /dev/sda
fsck 1.42.1 (17-Feb-2012)
e2fsck 1.42.1 (17-Feb-2012)
/sbin/e2fsck: Superblock invalid, trying backup blocks...
/sbin/e2fsck: Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/sda

Hi, I had an XP installed for years, never a problem besides those created by Win crap. Installed Ubuntu 11.10 about 15 days under a new 5gb partition created by the Ubuntu installer. Everything ran just fine.
Trying to open a Gparted since about 1 week, it always says that I dont have any partition, and that's all about whole drive unallocated space

I need to take about another 5 gb from the windows partition into the linux partition with GParted but I can't just do anything. I just ran fsck command on /dev/sda and I got that 'superblock' stupid message which I can't understand. And EVEN in the case its an error indeed its an error created by the Ubuntu installer while installing itself in the new partition created

fdisk -lu shows me:

Disk /dev/sda: 35.9 GB, 35939409408 bytes
240 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4642 cylinders, total 70194159 sectors   
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xcccdcccd

Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *          63    57471119    28735528+   7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda2        57462782    70187039     6362129    5  Extended
/dev/sda5        57462784    68622335     5579776   83  Linux
/dev/sda6        68624384    70193151      784384   82  Linux swap

How can I do to fix the 'superblock' issue ?

After some research, I found out fsck doesn't work on ntfs-based filesystems. After installing ntfsprogs through sudo apt-get install ntfsprogs it seems it worked.

sudo apt-get install ntfsprogs
sudo ln -s /usr/bin/ntfsfix /sbin/fsck.ntfs
sudo ln -s /usr/bin/ntfsfix /sbin/fsck.ntfs-3g
ntfsfix /dev/sda1

I was able to finally run a check unto /dev/sda1

Best Answer

/dev/sda is the wrong device to run fsck on. sda is the whole disk. Your Linux filesystem is on /dev/sda5.

Related Question