Linux partition suddenly refuses to boot

I must invoke the NBR gurus cause I have no idea what's going on here. I personally think the hdd may be dying (10 year old comp!) but I'd like to recover some documents off of the computer. This is a Mint Debian 32 bit system with Debian Squeeze repositories. It's my mom's and I only get to check up on it once every two weeks or so. One day she said it just randomly stopped booting.

Instead this error shows:

Code:

mount: mounting /dev/disk/by-uuid/**** on /root
failed: Invalid argument
mount: mounting /sys on /root/sys failed: No such file or directory
mount: mounting /proc on /root/proc failed: No such file or directory
Target file system doesn't have /sbin/init
No init found. Try passing init= bootarg

Busybox v1.13.3 (Ubuntu 1:1.13.3-1ubuntu7) built-in shell (ash)
Enter 'help' for a list of built-in commands
(initramfs) _

So I booted a live cd session to see if I can mount the drive. Nope. I have no way whatsoever of accessing it.
sudo fdisk -l gives me this

Code:

mint@mint ~ $ sudo fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80000000000 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9726 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xd0f4738c

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1               1           4       32098+  de  Dell Utility
/dev/sda2   *           5        4522    36289150    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3            9367        9725     2883667+   f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda4            4522        9366    38910976   83  Linux

Partition table entries are not in disk order

Fsck in Terminal says partition is already mounted, so does GParted if I try to do a check or fix. This computer dual boots with Windows XP and in the Mint live session, XP's partition mounts fine but the Linux area says

Code:

DBus error org.gtk.Private.RemoteVolumeMonitor.Failed: An operation is already pending

If I try 'mount /dev/sda4' in a terminal, it says there's no fstab entry for the drive. If I try umount, it says the drive is not mounted.

Like I said, I have no idea what has caused this so suddenly, and why I can't even mount the partition. I'm not inclined to think it was an update, because I'd figured out that Mint's updater, although running, was not actually updating anything over the past few weeks. Even stil, it wasn't set to anything beyond 'level 2' so no dbus, kernal or other severe system components. The last apt-get upgrade I did was about 2 weeks before this incident and everything was working fine.

There are things on this drive I would REALLY like to recover so any help would be great. Thank you in advance.

 

I would first try booting the computer with the livecd of TestDisk. You may be able to use the tools there, to regain access to the drive. If you find that you can get to the disk, but your system still won't work correctly, then you can try getting data off of the drive using one of the following tools;

ddrescue
safecopy
PhotoRec

If you're pretty sure it's a disk hardware error, then I would recommend the following;

1) Follow these instructions for freezing the HDD, in order to try and recover the data off of the drive. I would recommend you freeze it at least 4 hours, and make sure you follow the advice on backing up the data off of it quickly. You may only have a few minutes of normal operation before the drive dies again.

2) Try Gibson Research's SpinRite 6.0 software. I went the added expense of trying to recover data from a dead HDD by using a "data recovery" company, and in the end, they weren't able to do any better than SpinRite could.

Good Luck..

 

Thanks jas, I'll give all that a try.

 

Try mounting it with:

Code:

sudo mount -t ext4 /dev/sda4 /mnt

If that doesn't work, try a fsck:

Code:

sudo fsck -fC /dev/sda4

 

Thanks for the suggestion, but the first command just hung. The cursor drops down to the next line with no new text displayed, ten minutes went by and nothing had happened. The second command returns this

Code:

 ~ $ sudo fsck -fC /dev/sda4
fsck from util-linux-ng 2.17.2
e2fsck 1.41.12 (17-May-2010)
fsck.ext4: Device or resource busy while trying to open /dev/sda4
Filesystem mounted or opened exclusively by another program?

Hopefully I'll get a chance this weekend do so some of the hardcore forensics stuff an try to recover something.

 

I recovered everything with Testdisk run from the XP partition. Thank you!

 

You were running LMDE with Squeeze repos? Doesn't LMDE use testing?

 

The mount command, like most system utilities, doesn't return any messages unless it encounters an error. It is likely that your partition mounted fine, and that is the reason that fsck wouldn't work after issuing that command, since the filesystem was busy due to being mounted. After issuing the mount command you could have browsed to /mnt and found your files.

 

Not anymore. LMDE has two repositories now all its own. Incoming, which is testing stuff for the new LMDE update pack, and Latest, which is supposed to be a step down from Debian Testing in terms of the newest software, but a step up for stability. The install I had this problem on was set to Squeeze because it was done a year or so ago, before the new Mint repos.

Thanks. I still haven't cleared the drive yet, I'll give that a try and see if there's something I can do in fstab or elsewhere.