hd issues <solved>

[ComputerLitterateNoob]

I have recently installed vl 6.0 light on my laptop, tangent model 979 IBM model DLGA-23080 hd.  everything was working fine other than a few small issues, then on restart I recevied an error with the root filesystem check then it gives me the option to log in a single user shell for maintenance.  After doing so I run e2fsck on my drive which returns the error

e2fsck: Superblock invalid, trying backup blocks...
e2fsck: Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/hda1

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 don't know anything about superblocks so I tried the suggestion with 8193 and it gave the same message.  However, I am pretty sure i used the riserfs filesystem when installing

[nightflier]

e2fsck is for ext2/3 filesystems. Try "fsck": http://linux.die.net/man/8/fsck

[ComputerLitterateNoob]

ill try that as soon as re-install finishes.  Does a bad superblock mean the hd is going out, and may need replaced.

[ComputerLitterateNoob]

ok I ran that entered yes to begin and I  was returned to the prompt, does it just work in the background?

[nightflier]

To be honest, I have not run fsck manually for years. With reiserfs, if filesystem is not clean, it automatically runs on startup and there is no interaction. The check needs to be run on a system mounted as read only, so you can not really check your root system on a running system.

I just tested this on my system, checked an unmounted partition. You actually have to type "Yes" (captialized), otherwise it just exits without any feedback.

If you suspect your hard drive may be failing, I recommend the Ultimate Boot CD: http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/
Boot from this handy tool and run the included hard drive diagnostics.

To find your make of hard drive, run "hdparm -i /dev/XXX" (replace XXX with hda, sdb or whatever your drive is).
Or, if you can easily take it out, just look at the label.