Cant mount partition

[TheIdiotThatsMe]

Somehow, when messing with everything installing and reinstalling, I accidentally left my external harddrive plugged in. On there is a very important partition with data that cannot be lost (music that is no longer available for buy or download anywhere). It worked fine before, but now when I try to mount under either FC5 or Ubuntu, I get the error:

mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sda4,
missing codepage or other error
In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
dmesg | tail or so

Is there anyway to retrieve the information? It is an ext3 filesystem.

[lazlow]

When you were reinstalling did you format the drives?

Lazlow

[TheIdiotThatsMe]

Originally Posted by lazlow

When you were reinstalling did you format the drives?

Lazlow

I'm pretty sure I didn't touch the external, since I only had hda selected. Also the other partitions on the drive are just fine, and this partition shows the same size, but is no longer mountable. I'm currently trying a copy of the partition just hoping for luck.

[johannlo]

what mount command are you using
what FS is the external hard drive (FAt32 I'm guessing)
what is contents of /var/log/messages and dmesg | tail command?

[TheIdiotThatsMe]

Originally Posted by johannlo

what mount command are you using
what FS is the external hard drive (FAt32 I'm guessing)
what is contents of /var/log/messages and dmesg | tail command?

I edited the fstab and added it, then mounted it using mount -a

The FS of the external is Ext3

I will let you know that as soon as I can find a place to plug in my laptop and external HD in the library since the internet went out in the dorms again.