> Obtain the rescue CD, boot without mounting the partition and do a
> fsck.ext3 /dev/hd## with the hard drive unmounted.
>
Thanks but no joy. I get:
e2fsck 1.35 (28-Feb-2004)
e2fsck: Bad magic number in superblock while trying to open /dev/hdb2
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>
So I've done that and get the same message repeatedly with or without the -b
parameter. Are there other alternate superblocks? copies? data recovery
utilities?