The problem originated when I was trying to fix this problem. Things went horribly, horribly wrong and I ended up with a new problem altogether. The last thing I did was run
sudo apt-get install
and that caused my system to freeze. I restarted my computer and it would not boot from the harddrive. I ran a copy of Ubuntu 12.10 from a flashdrive that I had and ran gparted to see if my partitions were all there. It returned this message:
Invalid partition table on /dev/sda -- wrong signature 5208.
The drive appeared as a 2TiB unallocated drive with an error. The drive had 4 partitions before (plus random unallocated space). There was a fat32 partition, an ext4 partition which contained ubuntu 13.04/13.10 (I don't even know which one at this point), an extended partition which contained a swap partition for my ubuntu partition (I was meaning to move that ubuntu partition into the extended partition, never got around to it), and another partition (I don't remember how I formatted it). I should also mention this is a 1TB harddrive.
So in short, I have a corrupted partition table on my primary harddrive from which I boot from, how can I fix this?
I tried mounting the drive with
sudo mount /dev/sda1 /media/ubuntu
then I changed my directory to said folder and tried to list files and this monstrosity happened:
$ ls
ls: cannot access ��w�j^�.: Input/output error
ls: cannot access �?(�
�x?.|: Input/output error
ls: cannot access 6W_@�)?._??: Input/output error
ls: cannot access HB0v???.A}�: Input/output error
ls: cannot access ???.�X: Input/output error
ls: cannot access t)�.+�l: Input/output error
ls: cannot access ?h@
�.@ : Input/output error
ls: cannot access >? @�?.���: Input/output error
ls: cannot access m???.?�: Input/output error
ls: cannot access @ if�?a?: Input/output error
ls: cannot access ?M!vN$�.??n: Input/output error
ls: cannot access ?o�
�?.Bm`: Input/output error
ls: cannot access ?:I???
M.
: Input/output error
ls: cannot access W??.??: Input/output error
ls: cannot access �: Input/output error
ls: cannot access ?W�s??: Input/output error
ls: cannot access ?v?k?.???: Input/output error
ls: cannot access 5?$<N��: Input/output error
.x����.??i: Input/output error
ls: cannot access je?���.j?1: Input/output error
XjD?.���: Input/output error
ls: cannot access W??n�??.?: Input/output error
ls: cannot access �^x.$"�: Input/output error
ls: cannot access !�?*!?�j.�?: Input/output error
ls: cannot access '-�?k?^�.?��: Input/output error
ls: cannot access b�w?w?b.\??: Input/output error
ls: cannot access o�??�"z.?�B: Input/output error
ls: cannot access ��b�h.?3-: Input/output error
ls: cannot access �?.$7: Input/output error
ls: cannot access )??K.bk: Input/output error
ls: cannot access s?�z?.?(�: Input/output error
ls: cannot access �F@?0?.@�: Input/output error
.�D: Input/output error
.?�: Input/output error
ls: cannot access?�??�.
@: Input/output error
ls: cannot access ?/?�
?.��: No such file or directory
ls: cannot access rk?p4q(�.�k: Input/output error
This looks promising. This is the output of fdisk -l
$ sudo fdisk -l /dev/sda
Warning: ignoring extra data in partition table 5
Warning: ignoring extra data in partition table 5
Warning: ignoring extra data in partition table 5
Warning: invalid flag 0x5208 of partition table 5 will be corrected by w(rite)
Disk /dev/sda: 2199.0 GB, 2199023132672 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 267349 cylinders, total 4294967056 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x44fdfe06
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 113305600 894715903 390705152 c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/sda2 894715904 1489307647 297295872 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 1489309694 1497307135 3998721 5 Extended
/dev/sda4 1497309184 1953523711 228107264 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda5 ? 3013257822 3688738171 337740175 aa Unknown