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Xubuntu liveCD 11.04 running on "bad machine" with mdadm RAID1 array with an unrecognizable ext4 filesystem:

To rescue some files, I installed a new hard drive and formatted it to ext4. I copied 300GB worth of files retrieved from bad machine data scraping onto the newly formatted ext4 drive. I powered down the machine and removed the HDD, connected HDD to an ubuntu "good machine".

Good machine doesn't recognize the ext4 filesystem. Trying to mount, dmesg reports:

EXT3-fs (sdd1): error: can't find ext3 filesystem on dev sdd1. EXT4-fs (sdd1): VFS: Can't find ext4 filesystem EXT4-fs (sdd1): VFS: Can't find ext4 filesystem

So I put the drive back in the bad machine, and the filesystem is recognized and mountable.

Experimenting, I formatted another new drive to ext4 on good machine, then installed the drive on bad machine. Bad machine doesn't recognize new drive formatted by good machine.

What could cause bad machine to speak it's own ext4 language? Can the ext4 filesystem that bad machine is creating be corrected on good machine so the data can be copied onto good machine?

Edit 0

As requested by @bersh, command output on "bad machine":

# cat /proc/filesystems nodev sysfs nodev rootfs nodev bdev nodev proc nodev cgroup nodev cpuset nodev tmpfs nodev devtmpfs nodev debugfs nodev securityfs nodev sockfs nodev pipefs nodev anon_inodefs nodev devpts ext3 ext2 ext4 nodev ramfs nodev hugetlbfs nodev ecryptfs nodev fuse fuseblk nodev fusectl nodev pstore nodev mqueue btrfs iso9660 nodev overlayfs squashfs

and the next one:

# lsmod|grep ext #

(no output)

UPDATE 1

I realized I have been doing something wrong... The raid array is partitioned, I've been assembling the entire /dev/sda disk with mdadm when I should be assembling individual partitions: mdadm -A /dev/sda1 /dev/md5 and mdadm -A /dev/sda2... That doesn't answer the question though. because the non-raid ext4 partition was unrecognized on the good machine, and even if I correctly assemble the raid array, I might not be able to transfer it to a different machine and the different machine be able to recognize the ext4.

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    what says cat /proc/filesystems and lsmod|grep ext? Commented Jan 16, 2014 at 23:43
  • Did you reboot the bad machine? It could be some file corruption that just happens to create something that works but uses a different signature or something… It would be very unlikely though. Does it happen even outside of any RAID? Could some kind of hardware (fake)RAID be involved? Are the two machines running the same version of Ubuntu (or more precisely of mke2fs)? Commented Jan 16, 2014 at 23:51
  • How did you loose data in a RAID1, that is the more interesting question (to me), is your controller just borked? Can you copy files to a USB disk or FTP or something? Commented Jan 17, 2014 at 4:31
  • @bersch, I edited my question to include the command output you requested. Commented Jan 17, 2014 at 17:07
  • @Gilles, it's been rebooted to move internal drives between machines. Yeah, it happens even outside of any RAID, the drive I tried to use to transfer data scraped files had no RAID. It's got no hardware raid controllers or fakeRAID, only mdadm. Different versions of ubuntu and mke2fs on the two machines. bad machine is on a liveCD Xubuntu 11.04 with mke2fs 1.41.14, good machine is ubuntu 12.04 with mke2fs 1.42. Commented Jan 17, 2014 at 17:38

1 Answer 1

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There are two things that I can think of.

Some machines have an "encryption" feature that writes encrypted data to the hard disk. This is different from OS level encryption, and happens at the BIOS level. That said, the machines I have seen that in, only did that to the drives connected to the MB, and not anything external. Could your "bad machine" be doing something like that?

Second, you say the RAID array is holding the filesystem. Are you trying to access the filesystem through the RAID array, or are you trying to access the drive directly? I ask because your question sounds like you're trying to copy files from fs0 to fs1, then stick fs1 on machine2 and it's failing. If fs1 is a RAID array (even an array of one disk) then it won't work. Some controllers will auto initialize new disks that way.

That said, if you're using RAID 1, how in the world did you lose data?

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  • The encryption thing seems unlikely. It's got a consumer grade gaming motherboard, but I won't rule it out. I tried to access the file system through the raid array by first assembling the raid array, mdadm -A /dev/sda /dev/md5 then mounting the md device mount -t ext4 /dev/md5 /media/seabreeze Commented Jan 17, 2014 at 18:24
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    Oh my gosh I just realized something I've been doing wrong... The raid array is partitioned, I've been assembling the entire /dev/sda disk with mdadm when I should be assembling individual partitions: mdadm -A /dev/sda1 /dev/md5 and mdadm -A /dev/sda2... That doesn't answer the question though. because the non-raid ext4 partition was unrecognized on the good machine, and even if I correctly assemble the raid array, I might not be able to transfer it to a different machine and the different machine be able to recognize the ext4. Commented Jan 17, 2014 at 18:26

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