How to recover data? - Formatted, Fdisk'd, and disklabeled ad1, now ad0 with FreeBSD is messed up

[Gary W. Swearingen]

Mark Kane <mark at mkproductions.org> writes:

> Mounting /dev/ad0s1a showed what was my root partition before. I tried mounting ad0s1b, and it gave "Incorrect Super
> Block". I went on to guess ad0s1f, mounted it, and it was /usr. Appears like /usr/home/myuser/ exists and my files are
> there.

"b" is almost always a swap sub-partition which will have more-or-less
random data on it and so can be expected to give "Incorrect Super Block".
But it was smart to try them all.  Glad to hear you found your files.

> I'm not sure given the info that I have what the proper way to get FreeBSD back up and running again, and to make sure
> ad1 is ready is.

Again, if possible (and it sounds like it is now), try not to
write to ad0 until you get a copy of your data on another medium.
Use the Fixit CD or buy a 1 GB disk if you have to, and install
FreeBSD on that and then use it to get the 60GB disk in shape and
your data back on it.  THEN try to fix ad0.

You might also consider consolodating your most important data
so you can back it up on CDs or DVDs.  I bought a used tape
drive for 10$ and now keep important stuff on several CDs different
brands and types of CD and 4mm and 8mm tapes.

> I replied to a reply on the list a few minutes ago saying that if I mount /dev/ad1s1d, it shows the full 55G size and
> 51G avail that is supposed to be the ad1 60GB drive. I'm not sure why that's "d" though.

It sounded like he decyphered it from your previous msg.
Your idea of trying to mount them all sounds better.