For our convenience of storing data, in our Linux system, we used to make several logical file system(ext3,ext2,ext4 etc) based partitions to our physical hard drive. File system is a programmed set of rules, which is implemented for the storage, manipulation, hierarchical organization, navigation and access of the stored data through the operating system of the computer. Inside the partition, as a whole, data is stored under two sections: Meta data and User data. Under the meta data section, all the information of the corresponding partition information are stored in a systematic way. After that, under the user data section, all our data is stored.

If due to any problem, the Meta data section of the Linux system gets corrupted, the system fails to access the information regarding the partitions in the drive and hence, all our data residing in the partitions gets lost or inaccessible. In such as case, with the help of Linux data recovery we can be able to recover back our valuable data.

There can be a number of reasons, for which the Linux partition gets lost or inaccessible, such as virus/malware infection, operating system malfunction, corruption of file system due to power surges/sudden system shut down, superblock corruption, damaged group descriptor block or any other software/hardware malfunction etc.

Under all the above situations leading to the corruption of the Linux partition, you have to locate the problem and fix them to recover your lost or inaccessible data back. In order to do so, you can try running the 'fsck' command from the recovery console. With severe corruption, sometimes 'fsck' exits without running at all. In such a case, you need to make a force run of 'fsck' with 'fsck -f'. However, if it still fails to run and you are an advanced user, you can provide the address of the next superblock or the size of the superblock to help 'fsck' fetch data from their and fix the issue.

If the above process fails, you have no other option except making a fresh installation of the operating system after formatting the hard disk. The process will erase the data from the drive and you have to restore your data from the valid backup. However, if have not any recent backup with you or failed to restore data from the backup, any good Linux Partition recovery software can help you recover back your lost data.