Bad Superblock? trying to customize the System Rescue CD

[Dazed_75]

I wanted to experiment with making a customized SystemRescueCD (from version
x86-0.2.19) as decribed in chapter 8 of the manual. The first machine I
tried it on had a small /dev/hda1 so step 2 (extracting files) failed. I
have a 2.4 Ghz IBM Net Vista machine on which I had installed Kubuntu
5.10as the sole OS after removing all partitions. I booted from the
RescueCD and
ran fdisk -l /dev/hda1 to verify there was enough space.  It showed
/dev/hda1 was the bulk of the drive and type 83 (linux).  However, step 1
from chapter 8 ("mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/custom") fails with errors indicating
an NTFS error (HUH?) though there is no longer an NTFS partition present.
The second message (of 3) said there could be a bad/corrupted superblock and
the 3rd suggested looking at "dmesg | tail" but that only showed the same 3
mesages.

Sorry, but I can't give the exact text because when I could not resolve it I
began a wipedisk before thinking of checking here.  Therefore this is a
question of curiosity or preparation for a repetition.  I am assuming that
something did not cleanup the mysterious (to me) area between the MBR and
the beginning of the 1st partition (presumably at sector 63) and that this
area was being looked at as containing the "superblock" which appears to be
a Unix thing.  But this is just a guess.

How could this have happened?  How can it be fixed if the wipedisk and
reload does not?  How can I look at the raw content of the drive sectors?
Years ago I would have used Norton Utilities, but ...
-- 
"The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the
transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them."

Patrick Henry quote
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