Shell Programming and Scripting

Thanks a bunch, this is the kind of think I hate to try to navigate through on my own.

Since the file system on my new drive has issues after the dd, it seems I should do something like the following.

1. Try a repair tool (fsck, chkdsk)
2. If that doesn't work, reformat the new drive and copy data from my external backup back on to the new drive.
(the data that made it onto my external drive should be fine since cp can't copy a file system error)

Since this is an ntfs partition, should I try chkdsk in windows first, or can I try fsck from Ubuntu, or does it matter?

LMHmedchem

I think you misunderstand slightly.

It's possible for a file that copied fine to have a chunk full of nulls in the middle of it because of the errxfer. That won't turn it into a mysterious undeleteable file. It'll be an ordinary file that doesn't misbehave with cp, but its contents could be other than what you were expecting.

These undeleteable files had corruption in the filesystem itself.

Since there were only 12 kilobytes of bad sectors -- which were as likely to happen in empty space as inside a file unless the drive was over 50% full -- the odds of this happening are hopefully low. For block copies the contents don't matter, but if you want to actually check the filesystem contents, use windows tools to check windows filesystems.

Well I'm getting closer. After the cp to the external drive finished, there was only one IO error noted. I do get the fact that there could be other files with some 0s instead of whatever used to be there. I was just commenting that the IO error from cp was from a problem with the file system on the src drive and not the file that was being copied. Also that I shouldn't expect corruption of the filesystem on the external drive resulting from the cp.

I booted windows on the new computer and chkdsk ran and finished this time, so it looks like the new drive is good to go, plus I have the data on another external.

...then I put the new drive back into the original box and tried to boot windows. I got to the windows xp screen and the progress bar was slowly lurching across (which I have never seen) and it never did get past that point. I had used that computer several times that day (without the data drive), so that was odd. I decided to unplug all the drives except the ssd with windows. I forgot the grub2 was installed on one of the other hdd MBRs, so I got a device not found error from grub2.

I have not been able to get grub working yet. I tried to get the hdd with grub2 back into the sata port it was in, but I didn't have any luck with that. I ended up mounting all of my drive in the sata pci card and booting with a supergrub2 disk. I did, search for grub2 installations, and then loaded the file it found. I was able to boot into both windows and ubuntu doing this. I did update-grub in ubuntu, and it found all the OSs, but I still don't get the grub menu on boot without using the supergrub2 cd.

I'm not sure if I need to uninstall and re-install grub, or if grub has a problem when the drive is on a pci controller, or what.

I realize this has gone well beyond my original question about a cp script, so if anyone thinks I should move this conversation to a different forum, just let me know.

LMHmedchem

---------- Post updated at 02:40 PM ---------- Previous update was at 12:02 PM ----------

I was able to use boot-repair from a CD,
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair

and this got my grub menu back by re-installing. I am not getting check disk running on restarts, so it looks like everything is resolved for now. I am running everything off the sata pci card, so I'm still not sure if my motherboard sata controller is dead or not.

LMHmedchem

That there were actual bad sectors on the drive kind of points to the drive controller not being the defective part...

Windows may need to be reinstalled if data was corrupted. How else can you know you have a (relatively) dependable system?