sda2 is corrupted

[Michael Schwendt]

On Fri, 06 Jul 2012 11:22:55 -0400, Jim wrote:

> >> /dev/sdb1 is now a blockwise copy of /dev/sda2

> > On 05.07.2012, Jim wrote:
> >
> >> There are some important data files  I must save off of sda2
> > Before you start any rescueing, take a full snapshot of the partition,
> > e.g. "dd if=/dev/sda2 of=/dev/on_an_external_disk"
> >
> >
> >
> that is exactly what I did but nothing shows up on /dev/sdb1 external 
> drive after dd has completed .

That makes no sense. If /dev/sdb1 points at a corrupted filesystem,
above "dd" command will copy the same corrupted filesystem to /dev/sda2.
That's expected and okay, if you only want to keep that one read-only as
a backup of the originally corrupted filesystem. Then you can play with
rescueing sdb1 - but be careful and remember that sda2 is supposed to be
your backup of a corrupted filesystem. Don't mess with that one.

Better would have been to copy sdb1 to an image file instead of another
partition device.

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