Are you unable to mount your Linux hard drive volume? The problem could be due to corruption the Linux hard drive data structures. To sort out such problems, Linux provides fsck utility. It is a command-line utility, which checks integrity and consistency of Linux file system, finds errors, and tries to fix them. However, in case if you run this utility on a mounted or online file system, you may come across catastrophic data loss situations. At this point, you need to carry out Linux Data Recovery to get your valuable data back.

If you mistakenly run fsck on a mounted Linux file system, the root iNode may got damaged and all iNodes start calling similar blocks. When you try to mount the volume after fsck, you may encounter the below error message:

"Mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/hda1, missing codepage or helper program, or other error. In some cases useful info is found in syslog -- try dmesg | tail or so"

After this behavior of Linux operating system, when you run 'dmesg', as stated in the above error message, you encounter further error message:

"EXT3-fs: corrupt root inode, run e2fsck"

When you run e2fsck, as suggested in above error, it gives you further error message stating:

"Root inode is not a directory. Clear?"

If you say 'yes' to above error, then it goes to fix the problem and then remove parent entry for each iNode in root directory. When you unallocate root iNode and blocks manually, and then try to rebuilt root iNode, it says that it can not allocate any block in file system.

Cause

This behavior is caused due to corruption to the file system, superblock, root iNode, or any other Linux data structure. Operating system can not locate the hard drive volumes and stored files, after corruption to the data structure.

Resolution

To sort out this problem and perform Ext3 Recovery, you need to format the hard drive and reinstall operating system. Although, this method is able to fix most of the hard drive related problems, however also deleted all hard drive volumes and files.

This entire behavior cause serious data loss situations and need Ext3 Recovery software to extract lost data. The applications perform Data Recovery Linux in a quick, safe, and easy way.

Stellar Phoenix Linux Data Recovery is the most excellent tool to perform absolute recovery of lost data. It recovers data from Ext4, Ext3, Ext2, FAT32, FAT16, and FAT12. The software is compatible with Microsoft Windows 7, Vista, 2003, XP, and 2000.

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