A Linux-based hard drive can be divided into primary, logical, swap, or foreign partitions. These partitions are assigned a pre-defined space at the time of installation of the Linux operating system. However, as the requirements of the user change with a passage of time, the users increase or decrease the size of these partitions accordingly. To do so, the users either opt for FDISK utility or any third-party application. While the process of re-partitioning allows the user to fulfill all partitioning requirements, it might also result into complete unmountability of the hard drive, if not performed systematically. In most of these situations, the user encounters an error message that does not allow him/her to access the data saved on any of the hard drive partitions. To overcome such error messages, the user needs to opt for an effective third-party Linux data recovery application, if s/he has not maintained any backup.

Consider a practical scenario to illustrate the above case. You have three primary partitions and one extended partition in your Linux based hard drive. You use a third-party utility to delete the extended partition and allocate all the space to one of your primary partition. However, after you have done so and you reboot your system, you encounter the below error message:

"Loading console font lat9w-16.psfu -m trivial (Kfsck failed. Please repair manually and reboot. The root file system is currently mounted read only. To remount it

read write do:

bash# mount -n -o remount,rw /

Attention: Only CONTROL-D will reboot the system in this maintenance mode. shutdown or reboot will not work.

Give root password fol login:"

The above error message appears at the booting time and makes all the hard drive partitions inaccessible.

Cause:

The above error message occurs when file system corrupts due to improper partitioning by third-party partitioning software.

Resolution:

To get past the above file system corruption error message and access the data, follow the below guidelines:

Run FSCK command to repair the file system.

Reinstall the operating system and restore the data saved from an updated backup. However, if in case no backup is available, then you will need to use a commercial Linux Partition recovery software. Such Linux Recovery software use advanced recovery algorithms to recoup data from all the partitions.