Re: Is my root partition dying?

Quoting David Zuccaro (david.zuccaro@optusnet.com.au):

I actually do use that option to prevent the backup disk from filling up. fsck has been running all night so looks like the disk is bad.

You might want to give Recovery is Possible (RIPLInux) a try, http://sourceforge.net/projects/riplinuxmeta4s/ . (I notice that developer Kent Robotti's site is gone, and code has not been maintained since 2011.) You could also try using the ddrescue utility on the other recovery disk I mentioned, SystemRescueCd. http://www.sysresccd.org/SystemRescueCd_Homepage Both disks copy data from failing drives causing them as little additional damage as possible.