Ubuntu 13.04 to 13.10: Filesystem check or mount failed

Posted by SamHuckaby on Ask Ubuntu See other posts from Ask Ubuntu or by SamHuckaby
Published on 2013-10-18T18:01:14Z Indexed on 2013/10/23 4:10 UTC
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I attempted to upgrade from Ubuntu 13.04 to 13.10 today, and mid upgrade the system started flaking out, and eventually locked up entirely. I was forced to restart the computer, and am now unable to get the computer to boot up at all.

When I boot currently, it takes me to the GRUB menu, and I can choose to boot normally, or boot in an older version. I have tried several things, which I list below, but no matter what, when I try to finish booting into Ubuntu, I receive the following error:

Filesystem check or mount failed. A maintenance shell will now be
started. CONTROL-D will terminate this shell and continue booting
after re-trying filesystems. Any further errors will be ignored
root@ubuntu-computername:~#

I have fun fsck -f and everything appears correct, no errors are reported. and it passes all 5 checks.

If I run fdisk -l then I get the following information:

Disk /dev/sda: 320.1 GB, 320072933376 bytes 255 heads, 63
sectors/track, 38913 cylinders, total 625142448 sectors Units =
sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 4096
bytes / 4096 bytes Disk identifier: 0x00010824

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System 
/dev/sda1 * 2048 608456703 304227328 83 Linux 
/dev/sda2   608458750 625141759 8341505 5 Extended Partition 2 does not start on physical sector boundary. 
/dev/sda5  608458752 625141759 8341504 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Disk /dev/sdb: 320.1 GB, 320072933376 bytes 255 heads, 63
sectors/track, 38913 cylinders, total 625142448 sectors Units =
sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512
bytes / 4096 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0fb4b7e8

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1   8192 625139711 312565760 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT

I am considering just installing a new OS on the other disk, that currently has nothing on it, and then just attempting to scrape my data off the old disk (thankfully I didn't encrypt the files).

Really my question is this: Can I salvage this Ubuntu install, or should I give up and just reinstall?

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