Quote:
I'd force an fsck first (fsck -f). If that doesn't show anything try mounting as ext2. Then fall back to killing the ext3 info with...

tune2fs -O ^has_journal /dev/xyzX


Unfortunately none of these work - they all barf on the hard seek errors, so I guess the hard disk is just physically too toasted. Looking forward to some heavy patchwork with a file system debugger - not! But first off to cold, dark Helsinki for a few days...