* Carlos E. R.
Try " sfdisk -l -V /dev/hda", it checks for errors, and the man page above says sfdisk is the most correct of all programs. In fact, it says mine has errors - but as it works, I aint touching it :-)
This acknowledges that there is a _dirty_ file-system, and advises e2fsck which bombs with the same short/zero length block excuse.
Is there hope?
Always :-)
I'm not seeing it. I did not make the extended partition cover the entire disk when I first set it up, so I created another partition (rest of the drive) with parted and am copying the dirty file-system to the new partition. I don't know it this will accomplish anything but, it might leave me with a recoverable area if I finish trashing the problem area. Parted has a rescue command: rescue START END rescue a lost partition near START and END which accomplish exactly nothing. Thanks for the ideas, -- Patrick Shanahan Registered Linux User #207535 http://wahoo.no-ip.org @ http://counter.li.org