How to recover /usr and /home directory

[Edwin D. Vinas]

Hi,

I have a previous 40GB HDD which crashed during power outage and now no
longer repairable. Before I installed a new HDD, I can still see the
contents of that defective hard disk when booting from a single user mode.
Now, I set it up as slave and installed a new FreeBSD on the new master HDD.
But then, when I mounted the old hard disk, I can no longer see any content
in my /usr and /home directories. These directories are the ones with "hard
error reading" blocks which made FreeBSD not to continue booting due to
unending and irrepariable fsck commands on this filesystem. All my website
files and programs are on that old HDD especially in the /usr directory.
Does the new setup master/slave have somehow caused those files hidden? How
do I mount even the fragmented blocks? Any suggestion on how I can recover
my files? Why is FreeBSD so susceptible to fragmentations when suddenly
turned off or when there is a power outage?

This is what I don't like with FreeBSD; it does not care too much on data!
Even the fsck doesn't tell you that the hard disk is no longer usable as it
will still prompt you to do fsck over and over again. And now, my /usr and
/home suddenly disappeared when mounted. I can still see these two
directories last week but now it seems they're gone.


Thanks.
Edwin