Ran into same problems, and was bracing myself to buy a new HDD; till I figured that this might be a software problem.
Finaly identifyed that e2fsprogs was uninstalled accidently. Reporting this here, since this was what google turned up. Hoping that next time somebody runs into similar problem and turns to google for help, (s)he will find this. The system is (almost) upto date, running experimental. Currently running 2.6.39-1 (note the "almost" above) e2fsprogs is now 1.41.14-1 Obviously, some dependency problem -- Mahesh T. Pai || Distribute Free Software -- Help stamp out Software Hoarding!
signature.asc
Description: Digital signature