Power Outage and Linux File System Corruption
Linux is considered to be a relatively reliable operating system. But if crashes unexpectedly due to power outage or kernel bug, it can catch odds of getting corrupted. The next time when you restart your Linux-based system, fsck runs and automatically checks the file system for errors. If it fails, you should manually run fsck or reinstall the system. However, the situations when you don't retain a valid data backup, you will need to use Linux Recovery tools for completely recovering the data.
Generally, file system inconsistencies result if file buffers are not completely written to the hard disk due to system crash. For example, if there are inodes that have been deleted but are still marked in use, then it could bring errors to file system if system crashes. However, boot-time fsck can correct such minor problems.
During crash if system suffers hardware errors, the problem might become more severe in nature. In such cases, boot-time fsck cannot correct the file system errors. It also happens if the root file system is itself damaged. In such situations, if you are using Red Hat, you will be dropped into a shell, permitting you to manually run fsck.
After the recovery shell un-mounts the file system, the root file system is mounted as read-only. You can then use desired file system check utilities to repair your corrupted file system. But if you find the system non-recoverable with these repair utilities, you can try any of the mentioned tools:
' Root/boot emergency disk
' LILO emergency boot disk. You can also use this in combination with Root/boot emergency disk
If these measures fail to restore your file system, you might need to use your recent data backup. However, in case of valid backup unavailability, you will need to use commercial Linux Data Recovery solutions. These are special purposed tools designed to scan a logically crashed drive and recover the data in original state and view. Since they provide you an interactive interface together with complete documentation, you get ease at getting Linux Recovery.
Stellar Phoenix Linux Data Recovery is a comprehensive data recovery application for Ext2, Ext3 and ReiserFS file systems. It is an advanced application that provides instant and safe Linux Data Recovery. It is embedded with options like Disk Imaging, File Filter, Save Scan and others. It supports most of the Linux distros like Red Hat, Gentoo, SlackWare, Mandarke, SUSE etc.
About the Author:
Allen a student of Mass Communication doing research on data recovery software. He is also a freelancer for http://www.stellarinfo.com