Hi Christian (& all)! Thanks for the reply. I was away for some time but here is the extra information you requested. Yes, after the message "fsck.ext3: e2fsck_read_bitmaps: illegal bitmap block(s) for /home", fsck just stops. The command 'fsck.ext3 /dev/sda6; echo $?' returns the value 8. Looking at the man page for fsck, I found that this is an "Operational error". I have totally no clue what this means. With fsck, nothing is reported in the syslog file. If I try mounting the partition, I get the following errors reported: Jan 20 11:43:57 localhost kernel: EXT3-fs error (device sda6): ext3_check_descriptors: Inode bitmap for group 522 not in group (block 3271884801)! Jan 20 11:43:57 localhost kernel: EXT3-fs: group descriptors corrupted ! I could dd the partition without errors. I did copy the partition two times already, I order to be able to try some recovery on it. With converting a copy to ext2 and running "fsck.ext2 -v -y" on it (in something like two days), I was able to get some files (all?) in the lost+found. However, the file names are lost and the directory structure as well. It's hard to tell which file is what. I'm really wondering if there is a way to mount that partition again. I run Mandriva on a Pentium PC. My kernel is 2.6.17-5mdv. However, I first thought than my /home problem was some kind of booting problem. Thus I upgraded from Mandriva 2006 to Mandriva 2007. This means that I don't know what my kernel was when the problem occurred. It should be 2.6.12 as this was a straight out-of-the-box installation. My fsck version is "e2fsck 1.39". Best wishes, Cd <div>On 1/14/07, Christian Kujau <<a href="mailto:lists@nerdbynature.de">lists@nerdbynature.de</a>> wrote:<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">On Wed, 10 Jan 2007, Nickel Cadmium wrote: > # fsck.ext3 /dev/sda6 > e2fsck 1.39 (29-May-2006) > Group descriptors look bad... trying backup blocks... > Inode bitmap for group 522 is not in group. (block 3271884801) > Relocate<y>? yes > > fsck.ext3: e2fsck_read_bitmaps: illegal bitmap block(s) for /home ...and after this message, fsck.ext3 just stops? What's the exit code of fsck.ext3? (e.g. 'fsck.ext3 /dev/sda6; echo $?'). Try " fsck.ext3 -v" for more details. Is there anything related in your syslog? Can you dd(1) the device (read! not write! :)) without errors? Which kernel/arch are you running? Christian. -- BOFH excuse #99: SIMM crosstalk. </blockquote></div>