[ale] help with LDE [linux disk editor]

[courtneycthomas at bellsouth.net (Courtney Thomas)]

I'm tryin' to learn to use LDE and am experimenting with an old outta whack
disk.

When I...
    lde /dev/hda
the first screen comes up with an error screen, reporting....

    root inode is not a dir
    first block  (0) != normal first blk (1)
    found ext2fs on device

        inodes 252416
        blocks 504000
        firstdatazone 0 (N=1)
        zonesize 4096
        max size 1074791436

1-since root inode is not a dir, how do I convert it to a dir ?

2-what is the significance of the normal first block being 1 and this one's
0

3-what do you make of the numbers in the second block of data [5 lines] ?

4-by root inode, does LDE mean the superblock or block 1, I've assumed the
superblock ?

I hope that if I can resuscitate this disk, then when I run into real/active
disk calamities,
that I might be able to recover. Any suggestions for further information on
use of this tool ?

Thank you,
Courtney